Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Uncategorized

  • No More Nukes

    The Bush administration succeeded last week in advancing one of its most radical, dangerous and underdebated policy ideas. Shrugging off objections from a handful of Democrats, both the House and the Senate approved legislative language removing a decade-old ban on research into a new class of “low-yield” nuclear weapons and authorizing $15 million for the study of another category of “robust” warheads designed for underground targets. The administration insists it wants only to pursue research on the new nukes. But even this research will, at a minimum, multiply the incentives for rogue states and rival powers to build nuclear arsenals of their own — a trend that President Bush has rightly defined as the most serious danger of the new century. At worst, the administration will succeed in making nuclear war easier and more tempting, both for the United States and for other powers — an outcome at odds with any reasonable understanding of national security or morality.

    The protestations that only research is at stake appear questionable when placed against the nuclear weapons doctrine drawn up by the administration, largely at the behest of a circle of civilian advisers in the Pentagon and White House who for years have been advocating the development of new nuclear weapons. An administration plan disclosed last year called for a three-year process of developing the new arms; another measure approved by Congress last week, to lower the time needed to prepare for new nuclear testing from three years to 18 months, hints at the larger agenda. The new generation of nuclear strategists envisions using “low-yield” weapons — with an explosive force up to one-third that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — to attack stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons held by rogue states. The “robust nuclear earth penetrator,” with destructive power at least 70 times that of the Hiroshima bomb, would be intended to reach bunkers buried far underground — like those where North Korea is thought to be producing and storing weapons materials.

    Many scientists believe that earth-penetrating nuclear weapons will never be feasible. Current technology limits earth penetration to about 50 feet; a low-yield weapon exploded at that depth would do no harm to a deep bunker while wreaking enormous damage by spewing tons of radioactive rock and soil. A “robust” weapon powerful enough to destroy a bunker 1,000 feet underground, in turn, would kill at least as many people and cause as much damage as a conventional nuke. The administration’s doctrine nonetheless allows for the possibility of using such weapons not only in response to a nuclear attack on the United States but also preemptively against a state thought to be stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Any such preemptive attack ought to be unthinkable — the harm it would cause this country, and the world, would be catastrophic.

    At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is designed for use only in a situation where the survival of the nation or its closest allies is at stake. That scenario died with the end of the Cold War — but it ought to remain the threshold. The rapid progress of conventional weapons technology offers sufficient means for tackling the problem of deep bunkers and rogue arsenals. By pursuing other options, realistically or not, the Bush administration is feeding the budgets of nuclear weapons labs and the dreams of misguided strategists at the expense of the far more urgent nonproliferation agenda it adopted after 9/11. Congress should return to the issue as the appropriations process proceeds; this is a project that ought to be stopped before it causes real harm.

  • Nuclear Age Amnesia

    Memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki eloquently testify that nuclear weapons are not simply a bigger, better version of conventional explosives. Yet the haze of passing time seems to have dulled congressional understanding of the ghastly difference.

    Last week, the Senate bowed to Bush administration wishes and voted to repeal a 10-year-old congressional ban on the development of small nuclear weapons for tactical use on battlefields. The Senate also gave preliminary approval to $15 million for further research on a nuclear “bunker-buster” that would explode underground with yields far greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It allocated more millions for nuclear testing, in case the Pentagon decides to resume the program suspended by President Clinton. That authorization vote, to be confirmed in later appropriations bills, puts the United States on a backward path.

    The Pentagon says research is not the same as development, testing, deployment or use. All true. But once a new weapon is developed, pressure to test it and then to verify that it actually works in battle becomes great.

    The military’s trumpeted success with existing precision weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq undercuts arguments that more nuclear arms are needed. Consider what the reaction of Iraqis and the world would have been if one of the precision bombs aimed at Saddam Hussein had been a small nuke.

    Washington should not be showing the way to new atomic weapons that are easier to use. Anything that spurs nuclear competition will increase the number of bombs — and bomb developers — that can fall into the hands of an Al Qaeda. Beyond that, the world should fear an arms race that produces more nuclear weapons in perennial enemy states like India and Pakistan and unpredictable nations like North Korea.

    The United States has disposed of most of its smaller, tactical nuclear weapons and has agreed with Russia to destroy many larger strategic ones as well. Pledging support for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, as the administration does, is inconsistent with developing new weapons.

    The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 was decried for reviving possible U.S. use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries and raising the possibility of preemptive attacks on any nation developing weapons of mass destruction. The review, a periodic updating of U.S. nuclear strategy, and the Pentagon’s weapons request make the world more dangerous, not less. The nuclear genie has been out of the bottle since 1945. Continued control of its spread should be a hallmark of U.S. policy.

  • Economic Justice for All

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

    These revolutionary words from the Declaration of Independence are worth reflecting upon in light of the current struggle for economic justice in America. The government of the United States, the richest and most powerful country in the world, is perpetuating economic injustice within the United States and throughout the world. While the government seems to have unlimited funds for missiles and munitions, it is failing to provide health care, housing or education for large segments of the US population.

    Millions of Americans, including working Americans, live below the poverty line. There are more than 40 million Americans without health insurance with little or no access to basic medical care. There are tens of millions of Americans without homes, and home ownership is becoming an impossible dream for most young Americans. The possibilities of a college education are also receding for young Americans, as the funds provided for education diminish. The truth is that we have no economic justice in this country and the situation is growing rapidly worse under the Bush administration.

    State budgets are running in the red, and that means that their services to the people are diminishing. In 2002, states cut $49 billion in health care, welfare benefits, education and other public services. They plan to cut another $25.7 billion in 2003. State budget cuts this year and last year will be nearly equivalent to the initial amounts requested by Mr. Bush and allocated by Congress for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rather than help the states in meeting their budgets, and thereby support the American people, Mr. Bush has squandered our federal funds on an illegal foreign war.

    In spite of these shortfalls, Mr. Bush pressed for tax cuts of over $700 billion over a ten year period, tax relief that would go largely to the wealthiest Americans. Congress ended up passing tax cuts of $330 billion, less than half of the Bush request. While some $20 billion will go back to the states, the bulk of the relief will benefit the very rich, including Mr. Bush and many in his cabinet. Most Americans will receive a few hundred dollars or less, and the poorest Americans will receive nothing or next to nothing. By contrast, the richest Americans will receive tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax relief.

    This means that those at the top of the economic pyramid will have more money to contribute to the candidates of their choice, who in turn will help them to get a larger share of the economic pie. The rest of us predictably will get a smaller share of the pie, and there are far more of us to compete for these leftovers.

    In America, if you are rich, it is very likely that the president and the Congress will be working for your interests, by providing tax cuts and other benefits. If you are poor, who will be representing you in our democracy? It is not likely to be the present incumbent of the White House. Nor is it likely to be your member of Congress, when many in Congress are indebted to corporate interests.

    If you are poor and not well educated in America, you may be able to work for minimum wage. That will probably be enough to keep you struggling below the poverty line, particularly if you have children, and your children will be forced to join you in poverty. Further, if these children do not receive a decent education, the cycle will go on and will likely be perpetuated to their children.

    If you are poor in America and you are young, you may be able to join the military. We couldn’t have a voluntary military without high levels of poverty. And without a voluntary military, we couldn’t have perpetual wars because then the politicians and their financial supporters would have to send their own sons and daughters to fight. They wouldn’t be any more likely to do this than they would be to volunteer to go themselves to fight. They far prefer to send your sons and daughters to kill and die in foreign lands. In actuality, only one member of Congress had a child fighting in Iraq.

    The war against Iraq is likely to cost the American taxpayer at least $100 billion and possibly much more. Those who profit will certainly include the Defense Contractors, those who provide the munitions and other material expended in the war. Other profiteers from the war will be those contracted to rebuild what we have destroyed in Iraq and, of course, the multinational oil companies.

    Corporate names such as Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old company, and Bechtel will be among the winners from this war. Lockheed Martin, Ratheon, the Carlyle Group and other giant defense contractors will undoubtedly also be among the winners. The poor and middle class in America, as well as the people of Iraq, will be among the losers.

    We are now spending some $400 billion a year on our military forces, not including the special expenditures for the war in Iraq. This is approximately one-half of the money that Congress has discretion to allocate each year. The money that goes to the military cannot go to social programs that would lead to economic justice in our country. Money that goes to the military cannot even defend America as 9/11 demonstrated so dramatically.

    Four hundred billion dollars a year on the military is over $1.1 billion dollars a day. It works out to $45.5 million per hour, $761,000 per minute. Imagine all of the important social programs that will go unfunded or underfunded to pay that $400 billion per year for a military that cannot defend us.

    Some 500 billionaires on this planet, mostly Americans, have the equivalent assets of half of the world’s population. Three billion people on our planet live on less that $2 per day. More than one billion people live on less than $1 dollar per day. Over a billion people lack access to clean water, and over 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation. Millions of people die annually throughout the developing world due to water-borne diseases and inadequate sanitation.

    On our planet over one billion people are illiterate, and some 100 million children are denied access to primary education. For a small portion of what the US government spends on its military, it could be saving lives and building friendships by humanitarian assistance in food, health care, education and sanitation.

    Secretary of State Colin Powell has called for battling against poverty in the war against terrorism. “We have to go after poverty,” he said. “We have to go after despair. We have to go after hopelessness.”

    Of course, Secretary Powell is right about this, but it isn’t what our country has done historically, and Powell’s clarion call will not likely be heard in the White House. The US remains last among industrialized countries in the amount of its gross domestic product that it allocates for international development at 0.11 percent. The US is spending more on its plans to research, develop and deploy missile defenses ($7.8 billion) than it for its international humanitarian and development assistance ($7.6 billion). We are not seriously “going after poverty,” as Mr. Powell advised, but rather going after bombs, wars and missile shields.

    Our failure to make a serious effort to stem poverty and injustice in the world is leading to resentment, anger and aggression toward America and innocent Americans. Pumping large amounts of money into the military is not an answer to these problems and makes the situation even less secure for the average American. We need to change our policies both at home and abroad to bolster economic and social justice. We need to fund bread rather than bombs.

    If we want economic justice in America, we are going to have to change our direction. We are going to have to share the resources of the country with its people, not only the wealthy few, and also be more generous abroad. The United States is not meant to be a country “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.” It is a country, we are taught, “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We are the People and, for the good of ourselves and the world, we had better reclaim our country and reallocate our resources.

    This means a far greater involvement of the people in our democratic processes. It means throwing out the politicians of both political parties who serve the interests of the corporations over the interests of the People. It means reallocating resources away from the militarization of America toward meeting the social needs of the poorest among us and allowing all Americans to live a better life.

    The American dream is being squandered by a small group of extremist ideologues who are both greedy and myopic. Let us reclaim our land from these extremists. Let us strive to be a great country because we care for each other, particularly the least among us, and for the world in which we live. The implications of restoring economic justice are profound. They lie at the heart of environmental devastation of our planet and the suffering of large portions of humanity. Economic justice may prove to be a far more important factor in quelling terrorism than military force.

    We can begin by empowering ourselves to bring about the changes necessary to achieve economic justice in our country and in the world. We can start by speaking out and urging our members of Congress to oppose tax cuts and instead allocate this money to support health care, housing and education. Let us also urge our members of Congress to vote to cut back on obscene military expenditures and transfer these funds instead to meeting human needs, in the United States and throughout the world. The next step should be to work through the electoral process to replace those political leaders who remain indebted to corporate interests and committed to the militarization of America. By taking these steps, by our engagement, we can move toward restoring dignity and economic justice at home and abroad.
    * David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope, and the editor of Hope in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity’s Future.
    Readers Comments

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    America needs to seperate itself from the imperilist Corporate giants who drive the economy and our government.I think the first thing we could do is start to elect officials that are not so easily corrupted and lust after money,I think the first Question that should be asked any new candidate for any political office should be “Do you wish to partake in or put a stop to the plunder of the American People?”We need men who are strong willed and moraly driven not profit driven if we abide by Gods law we will prosper without manipulating markets and enslaving poor third world economys with high interest loans taken under deress and with conditions that are impossible to meet That would be the Imf and its buisness practices.

    –Stephen, USA

    Timely comments. In my opinion the current Bush tax cut proposal amounts to a radical departure from sound principles not only of economic justice but also of fiscal management — aided and abetted by what Alan Greenspan refers to as “the deafening silence” of Congress. This proposal is merely the latest in a series of measures thinly disguised as economic stimulants but cynically calculated to divide our society further into two economic spheres and to consolidate political power in the hands of the wealthy few. As you suggest, this plutocratic system (let’s not call it “democracy”) builds upon itself — as money influences our political processes, the moneyed interests are able to expand their control over those processes and eventually come to dominate all policy. Having consolidated their control and governed in their own interests, they then denounce any dissenters as fomenters of “class division.” The question is, how may we free our politics from the grip of money and thus approach “Democracy in America?”

    —Rob, USA

  • Iraq War, “Unprovoked Invasion of A Sovereign Nation”

    Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

    But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it – – more than I would ever have believed – – right on this Senate Floor.

    Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises.

    There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein and his direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

    Since the war’s end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

    The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

    What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq’s threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.

    Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team’s extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

    What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are “liberators.” The facts don’t seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but “liberation” implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of “liberation,” we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.

    Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

    Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

    And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq’s clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. “Regime change” in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.

    Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier’s gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies? As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way. The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.

    Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. This Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, gave away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.

    As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President’s tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

    But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood – – when it comes to wrecking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie – – not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody’s grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

    And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the “powers that be” will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

  • Strange Weather Lately

    The following is adapted from a Clemens Lecture presented in April for the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut.

    First things first: I want it clearly understood that this mustache I’m wearing is my father’s mustache. I should have brought his photograph. My big brother Bernie, now dead, a physical chemist who discovered that silver iodide can sometimes make it snow or rain, he wore it, too.

    Speaking of weather: Mark Twain said some readers complained that there wasn’t enough weather in his stories. So he wrote some weather, which they could insert wherever they thought it would help some.

    Mark Twain was said to have shed a tear of gratitude and incredulousness when honored for his writing by Oxford University in England. And I should shed a tear, surely, having been asked at the age of 80, and because of what I myself have written, to speak under the auspices of the sacred Mark Twain House here in Hartford.

    What other American landmark is as sacred to me as the Mark Twain House? The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln were country boys from Middle America, and both of them made the American people laugh at themselves and appreciate really important, really moral jokes. I note that construction has stopped of a Mark Twain Museum here in Hartford — behind the carriage house of the Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue.

    Work persons have been sent home from that site because American “conservatives,” as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy.

    Shock and awe.

    And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.

    Shock and awe.

    What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?

    Smile, America. You’re on Candid Camera.

    And they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

    The other day I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq, and he said, “Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.”

    What are conservatives? They are people who will move heaven and earth, if they have to, who will ruin a company or a country or a planet, to prove to us and to themselves that they are superior to everybody else, except for their pals. They take good care of their pals, keep them out of jail — and so on.

    Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies.

    Shock and awe.

    Class war? You bet.

    They have proved their superiority to admirers of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain and Jesus of Nazareth, with an able assist from television, making inconsequential our protests against their war.

    What has happened to us? We have suffered a technological calamity. Television is now our form of government.

    On what grounds did we protest their war? I could name many, but I need name only one, which is common sense.

    Be that as it may, construction of the Mark Twain Museum will sooner or later be resumed. And I, the son and grandson of Indiana architects, seize this opportunity to suggest a feature which I hope will be included in the completed structure, words to be chiseled into the capstone over the main entrance.

    Here is what I think would be fun to put up there, and Mark Twain loved fun more than anything. I have tinkered with something famous he said, which is: “Be good and you will be lonesome.” That is from Following the Equator. OK?

    So envision what a majestic front entrance the Mark Twain Museum will have someday. And imagine that these words have been chiseled into the noble capstone and painted gold:

    Be good and you will be lonesome most places, but not here, not here.

    One of the most humiliated and heartbroken pieces Twain ever wrote was about the slaughter of 600 Moro men, women and children by our soldiers during our liberation of the people of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Our brave commander was Leonard Wood, who now has a fort named after him. Fort Leonard Wood.

    What did Abraham Lincoln have to say about such American imperialist wars? Those are wars which, on one noble pretext or another, actually aim to increase the natural resources and pools of tame labor available to the richest Americans who have the best political connections.

    And it is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln in a speech about something or somebody else. He always steals the show. I am about to quote him.

    Lincoln was only a Congressman when he said in 1848 what I am about to echo. He was heartbroken and humiliated by our war on Mexico, which had never attacked us.

    We were making California our own, and a lot of other people and properties, and doing it as though butchering Mexican soldiers who were only defending their homeland against invaders wasn’t murder.

    What other stuff besides California? Well, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

    The person congressman Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said was James Polk, our president at the time. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, our armed forces’ commander-in-chief, “Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood — that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war.”

    Holy smokes! I almost said, “Holy shit!” And I thought I was a writer!

    Do you know we actually captured Mexico City during the Mexican War? Why isn’t that a national holiday? And why isn’t the face of James Polk up on Mount Rushmore, along with Ronald Reagan’s?

    What made Mexico so evil back in the 1840s, well before our Civil War, is that slavery was illegal there. Remember the Alamo?

    My great-grandfather’s name was Clemens Vonnegut. Small world, small world. This piquant coincidence is not a fabrication. Clemens Vonnegut called himself a “freethinker,” an antique word for humanist. He was a hardware merchant in Indianapolis.

    So, 120 years ago, say, there was one man who was both Clemens and Vonnegut. I would have liked being such a person a lot. I only wish I could have been such a person tonight.

    I claim no blood relationship with Samuel Clemens of Hannibal, Missouri. “Clemens,” as a first name, is, I believe, like the name “Clementine,” derived from the adjective “clement.” To be clement is to be lenient and compassionate, or, in the case of weather, perfectly heavenly.

    So there’s weather again.

  • Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

    In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?

    As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries.

    So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night.

    Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an “Indian citizen,” to come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I’m no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.

    Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).

    Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are.”

    I don’t care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.

    When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn’t any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the “Free Press,” that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.

    Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

    Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be “suicidal” for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries – earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn’t just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That’s Official.

    The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they’ll have to be planted before they’re discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn’t use them when his country was being invaded.

    Of course, there’ll be no answers. True Believers will make do with those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned chemicals in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about whether they’re really chemicals, whether they’re actually banned and whether the vessels they’re contained in can technically be called barrels. (There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there too.)

    Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.

    Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the United States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a “Homicidal Dictator.” And so, the reasoning goes, Iraq needed a “regime change.”

    Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful coup, the Ba’ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA, the new Ba’ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, “We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq.” Washington and London overtly and covertly supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the “Allies” fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.

    The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the most elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history (the opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who supported him ought at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren’t the faces of U.S. and U.K. government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted men and women?

    Because when it comes to Empire, facts don’t matter.

    Yes, but all that’s in the past we’re told. Saddam Hussein is a monster who must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop him. It’s an effective technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present to obscure the diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans for the future. Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan – the list goes on and on. Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed for the future – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central Asian Republics.

    U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S. freedoms are “not the grant of any government or document, but….our endowment from God.” (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is on hand?)

    So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).

    But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don’t really qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don’t qualify as real deaths. Our histories don’t qualify as history. They never have.

    Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV. Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam Hussein simply disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called a “power vacuum.” Cities that had been under siege, without food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance of urban administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid into anarchy. On live TV.

    Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American and British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no orders to act. In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their business. The security of whatever little remained of Iraq’s infrastructure was not their business. But the security and safety of Iraq’s oil fields were. Of course they were. The oil fields were “secured” almost before the invasion began.

    On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed. TV commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it as a “liberated people” venting their rage at a despotic regime. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: “It’s untidy. Freedom’s untidy and free people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad things.” Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I wonder – did he hold the same view during the riots in Los Angeles following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care to share his thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the two million people being held in U.S. prisons right now? (The world’s “freest” country has the highest number of prisoners in the world.) Would he discuss its merits with young African American men, 28 percent of whom will spend some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when he was governor of Texas?

    Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates produced the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the world’s first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice.

    At a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary Rumsfeld, Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts who had served him so loyally through the war. “The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over, and it’s the same picture, of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times and you say, ‘My god, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?’”

    Laughter rippled through the press room. Would it be alright for the poor of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be greeted with similar mirth?

    The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected was the Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection. Perhaps the occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are read upside down?

    Television tells us that Iraq has been “liberated” and that Afghanistan is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks to Bush and Blair, the 21st century’s leading feminists. In reality, Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed. Its people brought to the brink of starvation. Its food stocks depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete administrative breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into fiefdoms by hostile warlords.

    Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his 2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what probably constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was so close to shore that, according to the Associated Press, administration officials acknowledged “positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush’s speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline.” President Bush, who never served his term in the military, emerged from the cockpit in fancy dress – a U.S. military bomber jacket, combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering troops, he officially proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say that it was “just one victory in a war on terror … [which] still goes on.”

    It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army is bound by the legal obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility that the Bush administration does not want to burden itself with. Also, closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters, another victory in the “War on Terror” might become necessary. Syria is being fattened for the kill.

    It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, “People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.… All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

    He’s right. It’s dead easy. That’s what the Bush regime banks on. The distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy and oligarchy, seems to be closing fast.

    The only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must not be lost. It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of U.S. soldiers being killed in combat has been licked. More or less.

    At a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed, General Tommy Franks announced, “This campaign will be like no other in history.” Maybe he’s right.

    I’m no military historian, but when was the last time a war was fought like this?

    After using the “good offices” of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the “Coalition of the Willing” (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) – sent in an invading army!

    Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don’t think so. It was more like Operation Let’s Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.

    As soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany, and Russia, which refused to allow a final resolution legitimizing the war to be passed in the UN Security Council, fell over each other to say how much they wanted the United States to win. President Jacques Chirac offered French airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S. military bases in Germany were open for business. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer publicly hoped for the “rapid collapse” of the Saddam Hussein regime. Vladimir Putin publicly hoped for the same. These are governments that colluded in the enforced disarming of Iraq before their dastardly rush to take the side of those who attacked it. Apart from hoping to share the spoils, they hoped Empire would honor their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only the very naïve could expect old Imperialists to behave otherwise.

    Leaving aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches made in the UN during the run up to the war, eventually, at the moment of crisis, the unity of Western governments – despite the opposition from the majority of their people – was overwhelming.

    When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90 percent of its population, and turned down the U.S. government’s offer of billions of dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it was accused of lacking “democratic principles.” According to a Gallup International poll, in no European country was support for a war carried out “unilaterally by America and its allies” higher than 11 percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and other countries of Eastern Europe were praised for disregarding the views of the majority of their people and supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was fully in keeping with democratic principles. What’s it called? New Democracy? (Like Britain’s New Labour?)

    In stark contrast to the venality displayed by their governments, on the 15th of February, weeks before the invasion, in the most spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen, more than 10 million people marched against the war on 5 continents. Many of you, I’m sure, were among them. They – we – were disregarded with utter disdain. When asked to react to the anti-war demonstrations, President Bush said, “It’s like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case the security of the people.”Democracy, the modern world’s holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World’s whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will.

    Until quite recently, right up to the 1980’s, democracy did seem as though it might actually succeed in delivering a degree of real social justice.

    But modern democracies have been around for long enough for neo-liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy – the “independent” judiciary, the “free” press, the parliament – and molding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder.

    To fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under siege, it might be an idea to look at what goes on in some of our contemporary democracies. The World’s Largest: India, (which I have written about at some length and therefore will not speak about tonight). The World’s Most Interesting: South Africa. The world’s most powerful: the U.S.A. And, most instructive of all, the plans that are being made to usher in the world’s newest: Iraq.

    In South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the black majority by a white minority through colonialism and apartheid, a non-racial, multi-party democracy came to power in 1994. It was a phenomenal achievement. Within two years of coming to power, the African National Congress had genuflected with no caveats to the Market God. Its massive program of structural adjustment, privatization, and liberalization has only increased the hideous disparities between the rich and the poor. More than a million people have lost their jobs. The corporatization of basic services – electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10 million South Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected from water and electricity. 2 million have been evicted from their homes.

    Meanwhile, a small white minority that has been historically privileged by centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than ever before. They continue to control the land, the farms, the factories, and the abundant natural resources of that country. For them the transition from apartheid to neo-liberalism barely disturbed the grass. It’s apartheid with a clean conscience. And it goes by the name of Democracy.

    Democracy has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.

    In countries of the first world, too, the machinery of democracy has been effectively subverted. Politicians, media barons, judges, powerful corporate lobbies, and government officials are imbricated in an elaborate underhand configuration that completely undermines the lateral arrangement of checks and balances between the constitution, courts of law, parliament, the administration and, perhaps most important of all, the independent media that form the structural basis of a parliamentary democracy. Increasingly, the imbrication is neither subtle nor elaborate.

    Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has a controlling interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines, television channels, and publishing houses. The Financial Times reported that he controls about 90 percent of Italy’s TV viewership. Recently, during a trial on bribery charges, while insisting he was the only person who could save Italy from the left, he said, “How much longer do I have to keep living this life of sacrifices?” That bodes ill for the remaining 10 percent of Italy’s TV viewership. What price Free Speech? Free Speech for whom?

    In the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for 9 percent of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush’s election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic “Rallies for America” across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.

    As America’s show business gets more and more violent and war-like, and America’s wars get more and more like show business, some interesting cross-overs are taking place. The designer who built the 250,000 dollar set in Qatar from which General Tommy Franks stage-managed news coverage of Operation Shock and Awe also built sets for Disney, MGM, and “Good Morning America.”

    It is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent, vociferous defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until recently) the most elaborate legislation to protect it, has so circumscribed the space in which that freedom can be expressed. In a strange, convoluted way, the sound and fury that accompanies the legal and conceptual defense of Free Speech in America serves to mask the process of the rapid erosion of the possibilities of actually exercising that freedom.

    The news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most part controlled by a few major corporations – AOL-Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation. Each of these corporations owns and controls TV stations, film studios, record companies, and publishing ventures. Effectively, the exits are sealed.

    America’s media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has proposed even further deregulation of the communication industry, which will lead to even greater consolidation.

    So here it is – the World’s Greatest Democracy, led by a man who was not legally elected. America’s Supreme Court gifted him his job. What price have American people paid for this spurious presidency?

    In the three years of George Bush the Lesser’s term, the American economy has lost more than two million jobs. Outlandish military expenses, corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich have created a financial crisis for the U.S. educational system. According to a survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states cut 49 billion dollars in public services, health, welfare benefits, and education in 2002. They plan to cut another 25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes a total of 75 billion dollars. Bush’s initial budget request to Congress to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars.

    So who’s paying for the war? America’s poor. Its students, its unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital and home-care patients, its teachers, and health workers.

    And who’s actually fighting the war?

    Once again, America’s poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq’s desert sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all the representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a child fighting in Iraq. America’s “volunteer” army in fact depends on a poverty draft of poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking for a way to earn a living and get an education. Federal statistics show that African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only 12 percent of the general population. It’s ironic, isn’t it – the disproportionately high representation of African Americans in the army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and look at this as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million Americans (2 percent of the population) have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people have been disenfranchised.

    For African Americans there’s also affirmative action in death. A study by the economist Amartya Sen shows that African Americans as a group have a lower life expectancy than people born in China, in the Indian State of Kerala (where I come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica. Bangladeshi men have a better chance of making it to the age of forty than African American men from here in Harlem.

    This year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 74th birthday, President Bush denounced the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program favouring Blacks and Latinos. He called it “divisive,” “unfair,” and “unconstitutional.” The successful effort to keep Blacks off the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that George Bush be elected was of course neither unfair nor unconstitutional. I don’t suppose affirmative action for White Boys From Yale ever is.

    So we know who’s paying for the war. We know who’s fighting it. But who will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the reconstruction contracts estimated to be worth up to one hundred billon dollars? Could it be America’s poor and unemployed and sick? Could it be America’s single mothers? Or America’s Black and Latino minorities?

    Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via Corporate Multinationals. Like Bechtel, like Chevron, like Halliburton.

    Once again, it is a small, tight circle that connects corporate, military, and government leadership to one another. The promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous.

    Consider this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed by the under secretary of defense and approved by Donald Rumsfeld. Its meetings are classified. No information is available for public scrutiny.

    The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9 out of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to companies that were awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between the years 2001 and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President’s Export Council. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, “I don’t know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there’s work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it.”

    Bechtel has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction contract in Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign efforts.

    Arcing across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude of its malevolence, is America’s anti-terrorism legislation. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, has become the blueprint for similar anti-terrorism bills in countries across the world. It was passed in the House of Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to 79. According to the New York Times, “Many lawmakers said it had been impossible to truly debate or even read the legislation.”

    The Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated surveillance. It gives the government the authority to monitor phones and computers and spy on people in ways that would have seemed completely unacceptable a few years ago. It gives the FBI the power to seize all of the circulation, purchasing, and other records of library users and bookstore customers on the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist network. It blurs the boundaries between speech and criminal activity creating the space to construe acts of civil disobedience as violating the law.

    Already hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as “unlawful combatants.” (In India, the number is in the thousands. In Israel, 5,000 Palestinians are now being detained.) Non-citizens, of course, have no rights at all. They can simply be “disappeared” like the people of Chile under Washington’s old ally, General Pinochet. More than 1,000 people, many of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin, have been detained, some without access to legal representatives.

    Apart from paying the actual economic costs of war, American people are paying for these wars of “liberation” with their own freedoms. For the ordinary American, the price of “New Democracy” in other countries is the death of real democracy at home.

    Meanwhile, Iraq is being groomed for “liberation.” (Or did they mean “liberalization” all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports that “the Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq’s economy in the U.S. image.”

    Iraq’s constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax laws, and intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it into an American-style capitalist economy.

    The United States Agency for International Development has invited U.S. companies to bid for contracts that range between road building, water systems, text book distribution, and cell phone networks.

    Soon after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American farmers to feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the world, was put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam’s policy director, said, “Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission.”

    The two men who have been short-listed to run operations for managing Iraqi oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor. Fluor is embroiled in a lawsuit by black South African workers who have accused the company of exploiting and brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of course, is well known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands in Nigeria.

    Tom Brokaw (one of America’s best-known TV anchors) was inadvertently succinct about the process. “One of the things we don’t want to do,” he said, “is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we’re going to own that country.”

    Now that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready for New Democracy.

    So, as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done?

    Well…

    We might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional military force that can successfully challenge the American war machine. Terrorist strikes only give the U.S. Government an opportunity that it is eagerly awaiting to further tighten its stranglehold. Within days of an attack you can bet that Patriot II would be passed. To argue against U.S. military aggression by saying that it will increase the possibilities of terrorist strikes is futile. It’s like threatening Brer Rabbit that you’ll throw him into the bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written by The Project for the New American Century can attest to that. The government’s suppression of the Congressional committee report on September 11th, which found that there was intelligence warning of the strikes that was ignored, also attests to the fact that, for all their posturing, the terrorists and the Bush regime might as well be working as a team. They both hold people responsible for the actions of their governments. They both believe in the doctrine of collective guilt and collective punishment. Their actions benefit each other greatly.

    The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be argued that it’s no different in the case of the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft underbelly.

    Its “homeland” may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets – Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds – government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the “inevitability” of the project of Corporate Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little evitable.

    It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire’s working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples’ Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a great beginning.

    Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of alternative information. We need to support independent media like Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio, and South End Press.

    The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor’s chambers. Empire’s conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.

    You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to remind yourself of this.

    Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that’s as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.

    If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.

    I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.

    History is giving you the chance.

    Seize the time.
    Copyright 2003 by Arundhati Roy

  • A Message to Soka University on its Second Anniversary

    Good afternoon and congratulations on Soka University’s second anniversary of Dedication Day!

    My mentor David Krieger, the founder and President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation asked me to join the celebration here today and relay his best wishes for continued growth as an institution, family, and positive force in society.

    I am the Youth Outreach Coordinator with the Foundation. By your presence here today, I imagine that many of you share our vision for a world at peace, free from the threat of war and free of weapons of mass destruction. It is evident now more than ever that we must make this vision a reality.

    Soka models what is right in higher education. In emphasizing world citizenship, Soka stands in direct contrast to the so-called top institutions of this country which partner with defense contractors to develop missile guidance systems. These institutions seek Pentagon dollars to develop bombs, investing in mass destruction over mass education. The increasing militarization of America’s universities has a negative impact on the availability of faculty positions, selection of majors open to students, surrounding physical environments, and the core integrity of the learning experience. This increasing militarization has international repercussions.

    When you talk with the people involved in weapons research. They believe they are performing a community service. They’ll tell you that historical momentum justifies their work. They’ll say, “Many of these contracts date back to the 1940’s. How could time be wrong?” They believe their work is prestigious. Select students within these universities recognize what is at stake and do not accept such flawed logic. These students have organized in opposition to the militarization trend. They need our help.

    I ask that the Soka community stand side-by-side with these students at UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, University of Arizona, University of Texas, and elsewhere. Stand with them and hold true to the values of world citizenship, nonviolence, and equality. Project the good energy we feel here today to the backward corners of the world where humanity hangs by a thread and freedom fighters are suppressed.

    At the Peace Foundation, our motto is waging peace. There are 3 steps to waging peace: educate yourself, take action, and educate others. Waging peace is maintaining an awareness of US foreign policy, joining an organization working for peace, and communicating with our elected officials toward holding them accountable for their actions. Those are 3 simple things we can all do today: educate yourself, take action, and educate others.

    Congratulations and thank you Soka for all you do!

  • Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd “A Troubling Speech”

    In my 50 years as a member of Congress, I have had the privilege to witness the defining rhetorical moments of a number of American presidents. I have listened spellbound to the soaring oratory of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. I have listened grimly to the painful soul-searching of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

    Presidential speeches are an important marker of any President’s legacy. These are the tangible moments that history seizes upon and records for posterity. For this reason, I was deeply troubled by both the content and the context of President Bush’s remarks to the American people last week marking the end of the combat phase of the war in Iraq. As I watched the President’s fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

    President Bush’s address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the President’s policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial. This is real life, and real lives have been lost. To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the President to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech. I do not begrudge his salute to America’s warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely and skillfully, as have their countrymen still in Iraq, but I do question the motives of a desk bound President who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.

    As I watched the President’s speech, before the great banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” I could not help but be reminded of the tobacco barns of my youth, which served as country road advertising backdrops for the slogans of chewing tobacco purveyors. I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw.

    What I heard the President say also disturbed me. It may make for grand theater to describe Saddam Hussein as an ally of al Qaeda or to characterize the fall of Baghdad as a victory in the war on terror, but stirring rhetoric does not necessarily reflect sobering reality. Not one of the 19 September 11th hijackers was an Iraqi. In fact, there is not a shred of evidence to link the September 11 attack on the United States to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was an evil despot who brought great suffering to the Iraqi people, and there is no doubt in my mind that he encouraged and rewarded acts of terrorism against Israel. But his crimes are not those of Osama bin Laden, and bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not bring justice to the victims of 9-11. The United States has made great progress in its efforts to disrupt and destroy the al Qaeda terror network. We can take solace and satisfaction in that fact. We should not risk tarnishing those very real accomplishments by trumpeting victory in Iraq as a victory over Osama bin Laden.

    We are reminded in the gospel of Saint Luke, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” Surely the same can be said of any American president. We expect, nay demand, that our leaders be scrupulous in the truth and faithful to the facts. We do not seek theatrics or hyperbole. We do not require the stage management of our victories. The men and women of the United States military are to be saluted for their valor and sacrifice in Iraq. Their heroics and quiet resolve speak for themselves. The prowess and professionalism of America’s military forces do not need to be embellished by the gaudy excesses of a political campaign.

    War is not theater, and victory is not a campaign slogan. I join with the President and all Americans in expressing heartfelt thanks and gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their service to our country, and for the sacrifices that they have made on our behalf. But on this point I differ with the President: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.

  • Honoring the Legacy of Cesar E. Chavez

    Unveiled in September 2002, a commemorative stamp honoring the legacy of Cesar E. Chavez was made available for purchase recently. The stamp features rows of lush green farm land in the background and the smiling side-profile of the legendary labor organizer and nonviolence practitioner in the foreground. Cesar’s motto of “si se puede” (it can be done) speaks to all of us who face obstacles, set backs, and/or doubts. His deeds set a shining example of overcoming odds, helping others, and affirming life. It is fitting to remember him now with April 23rd, 2003 being the 10th anniversary of his passing.

    Paul Chavez, Chairman of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, shared these thoughts at the unveiling ceremony, “My father’s teachings of compassion, justice and dignity still ring true almost a decade after his passing. The Cesar E. Chavez commemorative stamp is a powerful vehicle to introduce a new generation of Americans to his vital legacy, teaching them that through determination and hard work they can improve their own lives and communities.”

    It is not enough to remember him though. We must continue his work. For example, the vision and mission of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation is to maximize human potential to improve communities by preserving, promoting and applying the legacy and universal values of civil rights leader Cesar E. Chavez. Their youth outreach programs emphasize service-learning, which combines community service and academic coursework to address needs in your immediate community. Visit their website for resources to organize your own event honoring Cesar Chavez: http://www.cesarechavezfoundation.org/.

    Read an essay about Cesar Chavez written for our Peace Heroes Essay Contest: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/peaceheroes/cesar_chavez.htm. Do something!

  • Chavez Stamp a Labor of Love

    It has been a whirlwind week for Latino activist Jack Nava, one that will culminate today after a mile-long march in honor of the late labor leader Cesar Chavez.

    At a small park in downtown Oxnard, the Ventura resident plans to recount his part in an eight-year campaign to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to issue a commemorative stamp featuring the United Farm Workers union co-founder.

    He will tell of helping to collect more than 25,000 signatures for the cause, circulating a homemade petition at college campuses, civil rights marches and other community events.

    And he will talk about swelling with pride last week at the ceremony he attended in downtown Los Angeles at which the 37-cent stamp was released to the public.

    “A lot of hard work went into this,” said the 65-year-old retired barber, who stooped in the fields long before the UFW helped secure such conveniences as toilets and drinking water for farm workers.

    “I didn’t read about Cesar Chavez in a book; I lived it and I know what he went through,” Nava said. “I thought he was a great man and I wanted to do something to help everybody remember him.”

    Unveiled in September, the stamp depicts a smiling Chavez against a backdrop of vineyards, symbolic of the strikes and boycotts Chavez organized to gain better working conditions for farm workers.

    The postal service receives tens of thousands of requests each year for commemorative stamps, but only a fraction make the cut. More than 75 million Chavez stamps were printed following a nationwide campaign spearheaded by the Glendale-based Cesar E. Chavez Foundation.

    Foundation spokeswoman Annie Brown said it was supporters such as Nava who made the idea a reality.

    “It wasn’t one person in particular responsible for pushing this through, but I think Jack Nava’s efforts are representative of what we’ve seen across the country,” Brown said. “What we find particularly encouraging is that 10 years after Cesar’s passing, people are still moved by his legacy to want to carry on and do these things.”

    Nava said he was first moved to do his part at a parade in East Los Angeles shortly after Chavez’s death in 1993. He marched in the parade holding a homemade sign asking whether there was any interest in a Chavez stamp.

    The positive reaction spurred his signature-gathering campaign.

    “I was one of the first to sign,” said Denis O’Leary, an El Rio schoolteacher and spokesman for the Cesar Chavez Celebration Committee. “It has been his mission to get the stamp. I give Jack all of the credit in the world.”

    In albums and portfolios, Nava has documented the drive with letters, photos and resolutions supporting the effort. Among Nava’s most precious documents is a 1995 letter from the postal service — sent in response to a letter of his — informing him that a Chavez stamp was under consideration.

    Nava continued gathering signatures and support until word came last year that the postal service would be issuing the stamp.

    “Man, I really couldn’t believe it,” said Nava, who spoke Friday about the effort to community leaders in Oxnard.

    “After all that work, after all of those times of having doors slammed in my face, it finally paid off.”