WAITING FOR THE MISSILES
IN BAGHDAD
By Norman
Solomon /
Creators Syndicate
BAGHDAD -- Picture yourself as
an American reporter here in the Iraqi capital.
You're based in one of the
fraying rooms at the Al Rashid, the large hotel where
most Western journalists stay.
There's plenty to cover, but the
obstacles are daunting. Iraq's government often makes
things difficult: "Minders" accompany you.
Interviews with top officials are hard to obtain.
Sometimes international calls can't get through.
Editors back home want you to be
a bit ahead of the U.S. media curve -- but not too far
out on a limb. Your stories are supposed to be ahead of
the pack but not out of step.
The winter weather is
unseasonably mild under blue sky. But the scene is grim.
By now, even the most optimistic souls can't quite
believe their own denial. Nothing is certain, but one
specter is close: The missiles are coming. Probably
within a few weeks.
Fear is in the air. And a sense
of doom has fallen over the city like a smothering
blanket. But there's little time to dwell on, or even
acknowledge, such emotions. Staying busy seems to push
back the dread.
There's no telling whether
your 10-day visa will be renewed. You want to stay on,
filing stories destined for front pages. You'd have an
up-close look at a turning point of history. But during
the later stages of the Pentagon's assault, there's no
telling what might happen to you.
Day by day, as the probability
of war nears certainty, you realize that you're getting a
small taste of the insecurity that Iraqi people have been
facing for a long time. And despite all the claims of
reportorial "objectivity," it's hard to deny
that many deep stories aren't getting much coverage.
You might do a story about the
escalating fears among Iraqi children. Many of them are
now exhibiting signs of acute anxiety. You realize that
the youngsters, along with older Iraqis, are experiencing
a form of terror. Yet the U.S. government is supposed to
be opposing terrorism, not inflicting it.
But the routine baseline of
journalism cannot be shirked. There are officials to
quote, political statements to analyze, military
scenarios to assess.
At least dimly, you ponder the
disparities between piling up facts and illuminating
human truths. (A phone book may be largely accurate, but
what does it tell you about the people named between its
covers?) Every day brings more details, but many human
dimensions seem to be excluded from the media frame.
People at home know how horrific
Saddam Hussein is. But do they know how much suffering is
sure to come if the U.S. government launches an attack?
Are American media outlets really conveying the humanity
of the people in the line of fire?
There's not much time to focus
on such questions. You wrap up the story for tomorrow's
editions, slip the floppy disk out of your laptop and
ride an elevator down to the first floor. Walking past
the no-alcohol bar, you stride into the little Internet
shop that caters to foreign journalists. The proprietor,
a young man named Firas Behnam, smiles and waves from a
desk.
Minutes later, you're clicking a
"send" button, and your story is on its way to
the newsroom back home. You breathe a sigh of relief and
glance over at a British newspaper reporter checking his
e-mail. You remember hearing him talk about covering the
Gulf War a dozen years ago: During forays to take a look
at bomb damage, he'd recalled, the Iraqi people he met
did not express any hostility toward him. You tried to
imagine the shoe on the other foot. If Iraq's air force
were bombing American cities, how would Iraqi visitors be
treated?
When you pull some dinars from
your pocket, Firas takes out the usual dog-eared notebook
 from a drawer to record the
transaction, then writes a receipt. In the last few days,
he has talked to you with great enthusiasm about his
faith.
Now you remember it's Saturday
night and mention that you guess he'll be going to church
tomorrow. Firas brightens, describing the wonderful
service at the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Baghdad
on Al-Nidhal Street. And just before you wish him
good-night, he says: "I just want everyone to
understand the love of the Lord."
_
"Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell
You," by Norman Solomon and
Reese Erlich, was published in late January by Context
Books. For an
excerpt and other information, go to:
http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html
Another
world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet
day, I can hear her breathing
Arundhati Roy; January 28,
2003 Porto Alegre, Brazil
Confronting Empire by Arundhati Roy;
January 28, 2003
I've been asked to speak about "How to confront
Empire?" It's a huge question, and I have no easy
answers.
When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need
to identify what "Empire" means. Does it mean
the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is
it something more than that?
In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary
heads, some dangerous byproducts - nationalism, religious
bigotry, fascism and, of course terrorism. All these
march arm in arm with the project of corporate
globalization.
Let me illustrate what I mean. India - the world's
biggest democracy - is currently at the forefront of the
corporate globalization project. Its "market"
of one billion people is being prized open by the WTO.
Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by
the Government and the Indian elite.
It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home
Minister, the Disinvestment Minister - the men who signed
the deal with Enron in India, the men who are selling the
country's infrastructure to corporate multinationals, the
men who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal,
steel, health, education and telecommunication - are all
members or admirers of the RSS. The RSS is a right wing,
ultra-nationalist Hindu guild which has openly admired
Hitler and his methods.
The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed
and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While
the project of corporate globalization rips through
people's lives in India, massive privatization, and labor
"reforms" are pushing people off their land and
out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are
committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of
starvation deaths are coming in from all over the
country.
While the elite journeys to its imaginary destination
somewhere near the top of the world, the dispossessed are
spiraling downwards into crime and chaos. This climate of
frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect
breeding ground, history tells us, for fascism.
The two arms of the Indian Government have evolved the
perfect pincer action. While one arm is busy selling
India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is
orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu
nationalism and religious fascism. It is conducting
nuclear tests, rewriting history books, burning churches,
and demolishing mosques. Censorship, surveillance, the
suspension of civil
liberties and human rights, the definition of who is an
Indian citizen and who is not, particularly with regard
to religious minorities, is becoming common practice now.
Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims
were butchered in a State-sponsored pogrom. Muslim women
were specially targeted. They were stripped, and
gang-raped, before being burned alive. Arsonists burned
and looted shops, homes, textiles mills, and mosques.
More than a hundred and fifty thousand Muslims have been
driven from their homes. The economic base of the Muslim
community has been devastated.
While Gujarat burned, the Indian Prime Minister was on
MTV promoting his new poems. In January this year, the
Government that orchestrated the killing was voted back
into office with a comfortable majority. Nobody has been
punished
for the genocide. Narendra Modi, architect of the pogrom,
proud member of the RSS, has embarked on his second term
as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. If he were Saddam
Hussein, of course each atrocity would have been on CNN.
But since he's not - and since the Indian
"market" is open to global investors - the
massacre is not even an embarrassing inconvenience.
There are more than one hundred million Muslims in India.
A time bomb is ticking in our ancient land.
All this to say that it is a myth that the free market
breaks down national barriers. The free market does not
threaten national sovereignty, it undermines democracy.
As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the
fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push
through their "sweetheart deals," to
corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the
air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate
globalization needs an international confederation of
loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer
countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the
mutinies.
Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its
name?
Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It
needs courts that pretend to dispense justice.
Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their
borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After
all they have to make sure that it's only money, goods,
patents and services that are globalized. Not the free
movement of people. Not a respect for human rights. Not
international treaties on racial discrimination or
chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions
or climate change, or - god forbid - justice.
So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal
confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this
greatly increased distance between those who make the
decisions and those who have to suffer them.
Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be
to eliminate that distance.
So how do we resist "Empire"?
The good news is that we're not doing too badly. There
have been major victories. Here in Latin America you have
had so many - in Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In Peru,
there was the uprising in Arequipa, In Venezuela,
President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite the U.S.
government's best efforts.
And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who
are trying to refashion a country from the  ashes of the havoc wrought by the
IMF.
In India the movement against corporate globalization is
gathering momentum and is poised to become the only real
political force to counter religious fascism.
As for corporate globalization's glittering ambassadors -
Enron, Bechtel, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson - where were
they last year, and where are they now?
And of course here in Brazil we must ask .who was the
president last year, and who is it now?
Still . many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and
despair. We know that under the spreading canopy of the
War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work.
While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid
across
the skies, we know that contracts are being signed,
patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being
laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is
being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to
war against Iraq.
If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball
to
eye-ball confrontation between "Empire" and
those of us who are resisting it, it might seem that we
are losing.
But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us
gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to
"Empire."
We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we
have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We
have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on
the world's stage in all it's brutish, iniquitous
nakedness.
Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now -
too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to
rally its own people. It won't be long before the
majority of American people become our allies.
Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million
people marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the
protest is gathering momentum.
Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history.
Secret especially from its own people. But now America's
secrets are history, and its history is public knowledge.
It's street talk.
Today, we know that every argument that is being used to
escalate the war against Iraq is a lie. The most
ludicrous of them being the U.S. Government's deep
commitment to bring democracy to Iraq.
Killing people to save them from dictatorship or
ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S.
government sport.
Here in Latin America, you know that better than most.
Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator,
a murderer (whose worst excesses were supported by the
governments of the United States and Great Britain).
There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without
him.
But, then, the whole world would be better off without a
certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous than
Saddam Hussein.
So, should we bomb Bush out of the White House?
It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go to war
against Iraq, regardless of the facts - and regardless of
international public opinion.
In its recruitment drive for allies, The United States is
prepared to invent facts.
The charade with weapons inspectors is the U.S.
government's offensive, insulting concession to some
twisted form of international etiquette. It's like
leaving the "doggie door" open for last minute
"allies" or maybe the United Nations to crawl
through.
But for all intents and purposes, the New War against
Iraq has begun.
What can we do?
We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We
can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a
deafening roar.
We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S.
government's excesses.
We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their
allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners,
and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they are. We
can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different
ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways
of
becoming a collective pain in the ass.
When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you
are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank
you." We can let him know that the people of the
world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey
Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but
to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen.  To shame it. To mock it. With our
art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our
joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our
ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are
different from the ones we're being brainwashed to
believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to
buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of
history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of
inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us
more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On
a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
-Arundhati Roy.
Porto Alegre, Brazil
January 27, 2003
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