1
Munich American
Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 9. April 2007
Alternative Radio
Schriftsteller
und Widerstand
A. Roy und E. Galeano
In unserer heutigen Sendung unterhalten sich Arundhati Roy, die Ikone
des gewaltfreien Widerstandes und Autorin zahlreicher
preisgekrönter Bücher, von denen "Der Gott der
kleinen Dinge" in Deutschland am bekanntesten ist, und Eduardo Galeano,
der Autor von "Die offenen Adern Lateinamerikas", über das
Thema "Schriftsteller und Widerstand"
R. Iran unterscheidet sich vom Irak nur durch ein einfaches "N" .
G. Was die Situation dort jedoch so kompliziert macht, ist die
Tatsache, dass Iran der eigentliche Sieger der irakischen Wahlen ist.
R. Die Zusammenhänge sind so komplex, dass wir
ständig Gefahr laufen, Wichtiges zu übersehen. Wir
dürfen wegen der Besetzung des Iraks das besetzte Afghanistan
und die wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit vieler anderer Staaten
nicht aus den Augen verlieren. Wir müssen gemeinsam
überlegen, wie wir dieser Entwicklung Einhalt gebieten
können.
In Indien haben wir jahrelang vergeblich versucht, den Bau eines Dammes
und die Umsiedlung mehrerer Hunderttausend Menschen mit friedlichen
Mitteln zu verhindern. Auch wenn so mancher bewaffnete Widerstand
erfolglos war, so scheinen selbst Sie nicht immer gegen die Versuchung
Gewalt anzuwenden, gefeit zu sein.
G. Obwohl wir beide in zwei weit voneinander entfernten
Ländern geboren sind, haben wir gemeinsame Hoffnungen, Ideale,
Zweifel und Ängste. Das ist doch der Beweis dafür,
dass es nicht nur die Weltordnung der Globalisierer geben darf. Wir
konnten nur über viele Millionen Jahre überleben,
weil wir das, was wir hatten, geteilt haben und uns gemeinsam
verteidigt haben. Im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg von 1936
kämpften in der Lincoln Brigade erstmals Schwarze und
Weiße gemeinsam Seite an Seite. Sie kämpften nicht
im Namen der Rüstungsindustrie um Öl und Profit,
sondern gegen Francos Faschisten. Vielfalt ist deshalb nicht nur in
Indien und Lateinamerika eine Stärke,.
R. Andererseits birgt gemeinsamer Kampf auch eine Fülle von
Mißverständnissen. Kaum hatte ich mich aus den
Fesseln indischer Dorftraditionen befreit, sah ich mich mit den
bohrenden Fragen der Moderne konfrontiert. Müssen wir uns
immer mit unseren Mitstreitern identifizieren? Mit Islamisten,
Stalinisten oder hinduistischen Rechtsextremisten, die wie wir gegen
den Dammbau protestieren? Wobei die, gegen die wir gemeinsam
protestieren, versuchen, uns gegen einander auszuspielen. Beim
Irakkriegtribunal 2005 in Istanbul wurde viel Positives über
die Rolle der Medien, der Regierungen und der Institutionen bei der
Verurteilung des Krieges gesagt und geschrieben. Doch als es in der
gemeinsamen Schlusserklärung lauten sollte: "Wir
unterstützen das Recht des irakischen Volkes auf Widerstand
gegen die Besetzung", gab es sofort einen Gegenvorschlag, der da
hieß: "Wir unterstützen das Recht des irakischen
Volkes auf Widerstand gegen die Besetzung auf der Grundlage der Genfer
Konvention". Ich fürchte, so kann man jeden auch friedlichen
Widerstand verhindern, Zeitungen verbieten und Demonstranten
erschießen. Wie soll man sich als kritischer Schriftsteller
und Bürger verhalten? Massenbewegungen haben immer etwas
Konservatives an sich und trotzdem ist man gezwungen, sie zu
unterstützen.
G. Leben und Überleben beruhen auf Widersprüchen.
- 2 -
R. Dieser Krieg muß ein Ende nehmen. Dieses Töten
und Sterben von Amerikanern und Irakern muß
aufhören. Das Sichversündigen an der Natur darf nicht
mehr weitergehen.
G Als Schriftsteller versuchen wir, alle Aspekte des Lebens zu
berücksichtigen. Aber Ökologie ist in Lateinamerika
überhaupt nicht populär. Angesichts der
Massenarbeitslosigkeit wollen sich die Menschen lieber mit einem miesen
Job vergiften als vor Hunger sterben. Ich kämpfe gerade auf
ziemlich verlorenem Posten gegen eine Papierfabrik in Uruguay. Man
beschimpft mich als Verräter und ignoriert die drohende Luft-
und Wasserverschmutzung.
Ähnlich schwierig ist der Kampf für Frauenrechte und
viele andere Anliegen.
Es gibt so viele Kriege in unserer Welt. Auch stumme Kriege,
über die niemand spricht.
Kriege und Mauern sind Brutstätten des Terrorismus, wo man die
Terroristen züchtet, die man als Alibi für die
gigantische Rüstungsindustrie braucht. Wie sonst
könnte man die schamlosen Milliarden von Dollar
erklären, die täglich weltweit für den
militärisch-industriellen Komplex ausgegeben werden. Man muss
feindliche Dämonen und Teufel erfinden, um diese
Riesenmaschinerie am Laufen zu halten. Und wenn der Irakkrieg
Terroristen hervorbringt, dann ist das Wasser bzw. Öl auf ihre
Mühlen. Die Drohungen des Teufels Bin Laden kommen ihnen dabei
höchst gelegen.
R. So wie die Überkapazität an Waffen nach weiteren
Kriegen ruft, genauso schreit der Hyperkapitalismus nach immer mehr
Profit. Dieses neoliberale System schafft so tiefgreifende
Ungleichheiten, die - so die CIA - nur aus einem bewaffneten Weltraum
heraus unter Kontrolle gehalten werden können. Auch Indien ist
Teil dieses Systems. Dort geschieht gerade das, was Sie bereits in "Die
offenen Adern Lateinamerikas" geschildert haben.
G. Es ist schwer, in einer undemokratischen Welt, eine Demokratie
aufbauen zu wollen.
Nicht nur die Militärbesatzung ist Ausdruck dieser verkehrten
Welt, sondern auch die weltweite Sicherheitshysterie und das Gezeter
über die Zunahme von Verbrechen. All das wird angeheizt und
gesteuert von einigen allmächtigen Regierungen, einem so
genannten internationalen Währungsfond, dem ganze vier
Länder angehören und einer Weltbank mit den ihr
eigenen Unterdrückungsmechanismen.
R Vor 1970 waren die USA eifrig bemüht, besonders
lateinamerikanische Demokratien zu stürzen, die ihnen
gefährlich zu werden drohten. Heute sind sie dazu
übergegangen, die Bedeutung der Demokratie zu untergraben. Der
Wahlkampf zwischen Bush und Kerry ähnelte einer
Waschpulverwerbekampagne. Obwohl Kerry, der Kandidat der Kriegsgegner
war, sagte er nie, dass er die Truppen aus dem Irak
zurückziehen würde.
Während des Wahlkampfes in Indien vor zwei Jahren setzte sich
die Kongresspartei für Wirtschaftsreformen ein. Im Fernsehen
liefen exotische Bilder von kleinen Dörfern, in denen die
Menschen auf Kamelen und Ochsenkarren zu den Wahllokalen
strömten. Sobald sich der Sieg der Kongresspartei abzuzeichnen
begann, verschwanden die Kamerateams aus den Dörfern und
postierten sich vor der Börse in Bombay auf, wo die Kurse
dramatisch gefallen waren. Unverzüglich erklärten die
Wahlgewinner, dass sich in der Wirtschaftspolitik nichts
ändern würde. Und die Privatisierungen gingen munter
weiter.
G Als der bolivianische Präsident, Evo Morales, nach seinem
Wahlsieg das tat, was er im Wahlkampf versprochen hatte, und
Öl und Gas verstaatlichte, da nannte man dies einen
ungeheuren, undemokratischen Skandal.
R. Es sind es ja keineswegs nur die schlechten Politiker, die sich dem
Internationalismus unterwerfen. Auch jemand wie Nelson Mandela musste
sich dem Internationalen Währungsfond und der Weltbank beugen.
Genauso wie Indien, drohte man auch Südafrika, Brasilien und
Bolivien mit Kapitalflucht. Wenn sie nicht tun, was man von ihnen
verlangt, dann treibt man sie in den Ruin. Diese Länder
müssen sich zusammenschließen, denn Demokratien
fühlen sich im Gegensatz zum Kapital für ihre
Bürger verantwortlich. Einzelstaaten sind dem grenzenlosen
Kapital hilflos ausgeliefert, weil man sie jederzeit gegen einander
ausspielen kann.
- 3 -
G Welche Vorbilder hat die Jugend in Indien, in Lateinamerika und hier
in den USA eigentlich? Welche Werte vermitteln wir ihnen, wenn sich
Lügen wie beim Irakkrieg lohnen? Heute haben Lügen
sehr, sehr lange Beine. Selbst bei angeblich demokratischen Wahlen wird
gelogen. Die Menschen in der ganzen Welt, besonders die jungen, sind
demokratiemüde geworden. Selbst in einer Musterdemokratie wie
Chile betrug die Wahlbeteiligung nur 25%.
2 200 000 junge Menschen gingen dort nicht zur Wahl.
R Auch ich habe meinen Glauben an die Demokratie verloren.
G Demokratie ist zu einer leeren Hülle geworden. Aber gerade
das sollte für herausfordern, eine neue Demokratie aufzubauen.
Wir müssen die Jugend überzeugen, dass es dabei um
etwas anderes geht, als um das, was ihnen die Supermacht vor exerziert.
Nicht um kriegerische Landgewinne soll es gehen, nicht um die
Vergewaltigung der Natur, um Hungerlöhne und tödliche
Kälte. Eine schwierige Aufgabe, aber ich bin fest davon
überzeugt, dass es auch ein demokratisches wirtschaftliches
Wachstum gibt.
R In Ländern wie Indien, wo die Menschen abhängig
sind vom Zugang zu Wasser, Ackerland und natürlichen
Ressourcen, baut sich langsam Widerstand auf. Aber selbst gewaltfreier
Widerstand wird gewaltsam unterdrückt.
Doch es gibt auch kleine Erfolge. Vor 6 oder 8 Jahren wurde ich noch
mit einer Flut von Beleidigungen überschüttet, wenn
ich die Privatisierung anprangerte. Heute besteht darüber
öffentliches Einvernehmen. Deshalb müssen wir bei all
unseren Anstrengungen unser Augenmerk nicht auf die Regierungen,
sondern auf die Menschen richten, die sich nicht mehr alles gefallen
lassen wollen.
***************************************************************************
Mit einem Zitat aus seinem Text "In dunklen Zeiten" mahnt uns Eduardo
Galeano, klug und mutig zu sein und nie etwas zu tun, was unserem
Gewissen widerspricht..
Arundhati Roys Text schildert die Schrecken eines Atomschlags und
fordert uns auf, die Welt und die Menschen zu lieben und zu verstehen,
aber nichts zu vergessen.
Alternative Radio
Writers and Resistance
Arundhati Roy & Eduardo Galeano
Town Hall, New York, NY 21 May 2006
Arundhati Roy is the celebrated author of The God of Small Things and
winner of the prestigious Booker Prize. The New York Times calls her,
"India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American
influence." She is the winner of the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom.
Her latest books are The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile, with
David Barsamian, and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.
Eduardo Galeano is the author of the classic The Open Veins of Latin
America. Like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States,
Galeano's Open Veins is prerequisite in the study of Latin American
history from the bottom up. He is also the author of The Book of
Embraces and the award-winning Memory of Fire trilogy. Both he and
Arundhati Roy are recipients of the Cultural Freedom Prize from the
Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico
ROY: Iran is just Iraq with an N.
GALEANO: And the funny fact about this tragedy is that Iran won the
elections in Iraq, so it would be quite complicated, won't it,
nowadays, I think. I don't know. I'm not an expert in doing these sorts
of things, but I would be quite doubtful about the results of it.
ROY: The thing is that every time something new comes, the old thing
drops off the map. So we've all forgotten that Afghanistan is occupied,
Iraq is occupied. These are countries that are occupied by the cruise
missile. Then there are those that are occupied by the checkbook, or
what they call public diplomacy. But 1 think one of the real problems
that all of us together face is that there will never be any end to
this chain of how many things we have to become experts on--instant
experts on the history of Iraq, history of Iran, history of
Afghanistan, but, really, what are our strategies of resistance? How do
we really stop this? That is the real problem. How much do we want to
stop it and how do we stop it? I think that's eventually what I want to
actually talk to Eduardo about.
In Delhi there has been a very public event unfolding, which was
obviously something that I've been involved in for many years, which
was the building of this dam and the displacement of many hundreds of
thousands of people. The details are not what I want to talk about but
the fact that this was a nonviolent movement, which was perhaps the
biggest nonviolent resistance movement in India, which was just mocked
land set aside, as so many nonviolent resistance movements are being
today. On the other hand, we have armed resistance which is being
crushed as well. So what I wanted to ask Eduardo, if I may quote you,
you say, "I have never killed anybody, it's true, but it's because I
lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire."
GALEANO: Oh, yes, these confessions. But the fact is and Arundhati says
that we share a lot of very important things, passions, hopes, doubts,
fears. And we have been born in different countries, far away one from
the other. But I think this is proof that this international order
called globalization is not the only possible organization of the
world. The world is organized like a story I once heard in France. It
was a French friend of mine who told me years ago. He said it was a
real story that really happened. It's about the big chef of the world
calling the hen, the dog, the turkey, the duck and explaining to them,
"I have called you because I want to ask you, with which sauce do you
want to be eaten?" This is the freedom of choice that we have in this
so-called global world. But there is another world, another world with
a beautiful heritage of what was called in our time internationalism,
which holds the memory of the beginning of time, when we were able to
survive.
It's impossible to explain the fact that thousands or millions of years
ago we were able to survive. We were so defenseless, the most
defenseless invention of God. How could we survive? We survived because
we were able to share our food and to be together, to defend together.
And this heritage of solidarity is alive in the whole world and is
explaining these identities we may find. It's true, we are twins. And
there are lots of twins everywhere.
There was a character of a story I read in Spanish. He is a very brave
man. He was a member of the Lincoln Brigade, the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, made from men, and some women also, who were able to mix for
the first time in U.S. history black soldiers and white soldiers. That
was a first time. In the Second World War the order was established,
and then blacks were sent to death and to the kitchen, to the kitchen
and to death. But at that time in Spain, during the Lincoln Brigade
experience, blacks and whites were fighting together. And they were not
fighting for oil, big enterprises, they were not fighting in the name
of the military industry. They were fighting because they believed in
brotherhood. And that's it here also, not only in Latin America or in
India. There are so many people still believing that it's true that we
are so diverse and this is our best treasure, nuestro mejor tesoro,
diversity, but that we are diverse and also we are one in the sense
that we share so many horrors but also so many marvels.
ROY: I also think that the other thing is happening. Being involved
with a lot of on-the-ground political activity in India, one of the
things that terrifies me, sometimes I think about, is that is one
always destined to fight on the side of people that have no space for
you in their social imagination? If the people I'm with win this
battle, I’ll be the first one that's strung up. Because it's
really a very complicated process where, let's say, the first part of
even my life personally was spent battling tradition as a woman in
India, battling and hoping that I'm not going to end up marrying some
man in the village I grew up in and getting beaten on weekends. To have
fought that tradition, your own tradition, and escaped it only to come
up against a modernity which is so horrendous is a very, very
frightening thing. If you look at who are the people who are waging the
war, whether it is in the name of Islam or in the name of former
Stalinists or whatever, actually people are fighting but maybe the
dreams that you are dreaming are not the same. So how do you negotiate
that?
It's an extremely difficult job, I think, to figure out how to pick
your way down this path, because. To give you a small example. Delhi
now is like a police city. There is a little space that's designated
for protests, and no one can go beyond the space or spill over without
getting shot or arrested or whatever. [Same here] Same here. Yes, I saw
the New York police yesterday lined up to beat someone up. I don't know
who. While you're there with a particular group of people, let's say
the people that are being displaced by the dam, this is not a political
constituency, obviously; it's a constituency that's formed because they
are being displaced by that reservoir. They may not agree with each
other otherwise. Many of those same people will be--they are fighting
the dam, but maybe they also belong to a right-wing Hindu party, maybe
they've also been involved in what happened in Gujarat with the
Muslims. So how do you break these things down? It is very difficult to
know.
And then when power is against you, it invokes these divisions and it
tries to divide things up. I was on the Iraq War Tribunal in June 2005
in Istanbul, which was a wonderful exercise and a wonderful experience,
where you listen to testimony, and there was an analysis of the role of
the media, of the role of all kinds of different people and governments
and institutions in the prosecution of this war. At the end, the jury
had a very difficult question to debate, which was that we said, "We
support the right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation." And
some people wanted to say, "We support the right of the Iraqi people to
resist the occupation as per the Geneva Conventions," which basically
means that they don't have the right, as far as I can see. You have
this brutal occupation. Any kind of nonviolent resistance has been
completely mowed down. Newspapers have been closed, demonstrators have
been shot. So how do you resist this? And who's going to tell you what
the rules are? And, of course, brutal things are happening.
So I think one of our problems is how pristine do we want to be and how
not. These are very knotty issues. Even as writers, to be involved in
mass movements, as I am constantly, mass movements also have a sort of
conservativeness to them. Someone like me is always on the edge of it,
because you're not completely able to be that, and yet you support them.
GALEANO: Paradoxes. So many contradictions and paradoxes. But this is
life. Life is contradictory. That's why life is moving
on.
ROY: The thing is that at the same time Iraq remains occupied. We have
to stop that. We have to tell them to get out. The soldiers have to
stop fighting, the weapons have to stop going, the killing has to stop.
And I think that that responsibility is very much on the people in this
country, that you have to find a way of stopping it, because every day
that it goes on is like a poison that's been injected into the
bloodstream, not just of society but also of the rivers or--the
accounts we keep are so terrible. It's only about people, isn't it? The
Lancet journal, 100,000 Iraqis and 2,000 Americans or whatever. But
what about the animals? What about the rivers? What about been the
absolute desecration that is taking place? Even we are forced into a
place where our own accounts are skewed. We don't take into account the
earth or the water or the mountains. It's almost ludicrous if you begin
to mention it, because the rest of the horrors are so huge.
GALEANO: I think we should be conscious that perhaps writing and our
profession, our--
ROY: Love.
GALEANO: --life, passion, passion of writing has something to do with
it in the sense that I think we are trying to integrate all these parts
of a disintegrated world. And it's very difficult to do it, of course.
For instance, I don't know, perhaps in India you are more lucky than in
Latin America. But, generally speaking, ecology is not a popular cause.
People don't identify themselves with ecology at all. They want to get
jobs. In Uruguay, for instance, we have so many, thousands and
thousands, of jobless people. So they prefer to die from contamination
than to die from hunger. And I'm now, for instance, fighting in Uruguay
with a very small group of people against the paper plants. We are
quite lonely. I will be denounced as a traitor to my country, traidor
de la patria, because even our progressive government is receiving this
as the best possible news, Investments, they create jobs. And they are
ruining the country, certainly. We are left dry land, poison air, agua
podrida, rotten water. And it's very difficult to speak and convince
people that will begin to say, "We need to work." So it's not easy.
It's a very difficult job.
The same thing about female rights, women's rights. And the same thing
about a lot of other issues, because this is a very difficult world. I
was hearing what you said recently about the war and how we should
fight against the war, perhaps trying even to explain to the makers of
war that walls and wars, there are a lot of wars in the world nowadays.
Some of them are mute wars because nobody speaks about these wars. But
wars and walls are factories for terrorists: they are creating millions
of terrorists. But then I realized that it was very stupid to tell this
to the owners of our planet, because they build walls and they make
wars because they need terrorists as an alibi for their big, huge,
giant military machine. Otherwise, how can you explain the criminal
fact, the scandal, that this world is expending $2,600,000,000 millions
of dollars each day in the military industrial complex. How can you
explain it without demons, without devils, without enemies? They have a
shortage of enemies. They need enemies. They will begin publishing ads
in the newspapers, "We need enemies," in the Employment section.
Because this machine needs justification, otherwise it would be
impossible to sustain it.
And then, they are saying, for instance, lraq is creating a lot of
terrorists. But this is the fuel they need, the oil they need to go on.
They have also some professionals devils like bin Laden, who,
unfortunately, is a bureaucrat of fear. He works creating fear, always
ready, like the Boy Scouts. Each time they need him, he is there
saying, "I'm going to eat all children." He's a professional. It's very
complicated. It's quite a complicated subject.
ROY: In terms of what is being thought of now, of course, one part of
it is the military-industrial complex and the fact that now the
manufacture of weapons has outstripped the need for war, so you need to
have wars in order to use the weapons and so on. But also I think what
has happened is a hypercapitalism. It's a machine that's gone
completely hysterical in terms of how it needs to generate profit. It
can't stop itself. And so you have the whole concept now of
full-spectrum dominance, where in the papers of the CIA and so on
they've already said that this kind of neoliberal regime is going to
create levels of inequality that can only now be controlled if you
weaponize space. Obviously, the way it's happening in the kind of
subcontracting of the people who are going to oversee this so-called
war is not just the American government but its cohorts, like India
now. And I think it is very interesting to read The Open Veins of Latin
America now, because what is happening in India now is what happened to
Latin America in the 1970s.
GALEANO: It's another good prophecy. 1 think, really, Arundhati, that
it's difficult to build democracy inside one country in a world which
is not democratic at all. This world is clearly not democratic. It's
preaching but not practicing democracy. It's not only military
occupation, of course, which is the most tragic expression of this
crazy world as it is, but also other forms of occupation. The
supergovernment that's governing governments, especially in the south
of the world. All these big scandals about the rise of crime,
delinquency, the streets, and this worldwide hysteria about safety.
Okay, they would blame young people especially, young delinquents and
poor people, of course, and blacks. But I would ask, who are the models
nowadays? For instance, these governments, supergovernments,
ubergovenments who are telling us what we can do and what we cannot do
and what we should do, they are deciding everything in the south of the
world, even the speed of the flight of the flies, la velocidad del
vuelo de las moscas. Deciding absolutely everything. And you may see
them. The International Monetary Fund is managed by five countries.
It's called international, but it belongs especially to one country,
which has the right of veto--I don't remember the name of the
country--and to four other countries. And the World Bank, another
superinstitution occupying countries, not in the military way.
ROY: I think what's interesting is that in the 1970s and a little
earlier, the American government was busy toppling democracies because
democracies were real threats in Latin America and so on. Now they've
learned how to hollow out democracy and empty it of meaning. So even in
America, when you have Bush and Kerry running against each other, it's
like choosing brands of washing soap. Whether you buy this brand or
that brand, they're both owned by Procter & Gamble or whatever.
So it's really an incredible system where they've hollowed it out. I
know that the antiwar movement, for example, did support Kerry in the
election. But he wasn't saying he was going to pull out the troops, so
what did it mean?
When the elections happened in India two years ago, the Congress Party
campaigned basically against the economic reforms. And you had
television cameras in all these remote villages filming this great
democracy and people coming on camels and bullock carts--it was all
very exotic--to vote. The minute it became clear that the Congress was
going to win the elections, those cameras were rushed out of the
villages and outside the Bombay Stock Exchange. The stock market fell.
And before you even knew who was going to be the prime minister, they
had to come out and say, "'No, we are riot going to change the
privatization regime. No, we are not going to change anything." And it
races on.
GALEANO: So everything is possible and will be applauded, but as soon
as you do exactly the opposite of what you have promised, this divorce
between words and facts, that is working against the prestige of
language and the prestige of democracy. You have seen in Latin America
the scandal now, big scandal, because Evo Morales nationalized the oil
and the gas. Terrible, terrible. The world exploded. Why, Arundhati, is
this a scandal? Because he committed an unforgivable sin. He did
exactly what he had promised to do. This is not democratic.
ROY: But I think the interesting thing here is that if you look at what
we were talking about, internationalism, why is it eventually--forget
the wicked politicians. Look at even somebody like Nelson Mandela. What
did he have to do? He became the hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle,
but the minute he came to power he had to bow down to the IMF and the
World Bank. Why did it happen? Not because he's personally a bad
person. But whether it's India or whether it's South Africa or whether
it's Brazil or whether it's Bolivia, there is this threat of capital
flight. "If you do this, we're going to pull out. Your economy is going
to collapse."
So the internationalism has to come from these countries joining up,
because one of the good things about democracy for the establishment is
once again democracy is within national borders, whereas capital is
outside it. So you have a free flow of capital, but obviously you have
policed borders, nuclear-manned borders now. So unless there is a
linking up of countries of the south, you're always under threat. The
minute you take power, you're under threat: There will be capital
flight. So it is not worth just saying these are bad people, because
there is a system in place that's causing this to happen.
GALEANO: And the problem is that for the youth and new generations
coming, the entire world, in India and Latin America, here in the
States, everywhere, what are the models of success? What are the images
of virtue in a world that is rewarding lies, for instance, lies about
the Iraqi war? My poor mother used to say that lies have short legs,
but it's not true at all. Lies have very, very long legs, and they run
faster and faster, faster than the liars, because when the liars say,
"No, it was an error, a mistake," nobody, pays may attention to it,
like in Iraq. Also in the so-called democratic elections in most
countries, we are trained to accept the fact that a politician is
somebody clever enough to lie as if he were telling the truth.
And it happens that there is now a crisis of faith in democracy all
over the world, but especially among young people. For instance, even
sort of a model of democracy like Chile in the recent election, which
had, I think, a very good result, which was the election of a
woman--it's about time that we notice that half of all of us are women.
This so-called minority. I don't know how half of the population can be
a minority. But I'm not strong in math, en matem6tica. Perhaps that is
why. So the result was good. But I was very anguished by the result
also, because in Chile, three of each four young people didn't vote, 75
percent. Two million two hundred thousand people didn't vote, all of
them young.
ROY: But the point is, when you have Tide and Ivory Snow, then what's
the point of voting? I also suffer from a crisis in faith in democracy.
And I feel that it's very, very important to have a crisis in faith in
democracy, because democracy is not democracy anymore.
GALEANO: Democracy should be democracy. The problem is that
democracy is being betrayed by the professionals.
ROY: It's just become the ceremony of democracy, elections. That's it.
GALEANO: Like a mass without God.
ROY: It is a meaningless ceremony.
GALEANO: But this is a challenge. We should build a new democracy. But
there you have the problem of models and the superpowers who are really
nowadays ruling countries even in countries where democracy is more or
less clean or possible. But if you have these superpowers imposing an
international model which kidnaps countries, rapes nature, strangles
salaries, and kills everything it touches, then how should you convince
young people that they should follow a different track? They are the
models of success. So it's really a problem for all of us who really
believe-I strongly believe in the necessity of reopening growth toward
a real democracy, but it's quite difficult.
ROY: Say, in a country like India, where actually the mass of people do
live on natural resources and their fates are not tied up in jobs but
in access to water and access to land and access to natural resources,
there is a sense in which the mass of people completely and deeply
understand that this is the wrong way to go. So there is a big
resistance building. The only trouble is that that resistance is being
mowed down, it's being beaten down. Whether it's nonviolent or whether
it's an armed struggle, in both cases it's been desecrated.
But the victory so far is that I remember even seven or eight years ago
when I was writing about privatization, it would just be a slew of
insults in reply. But now the realization is there. How you fight the
war remains. One of the things I really believe in is not the politics
of government that should be addressed first, but for us the politics
of opposition, the politics of being a really difficult people that
refuses to let this be done to us.
GALEANO: I wrote a text. Strangely enough, it was closely linked to
your last words. I don't believe in recipes, recetas, for social
struggles or even trying to define, if it would be possible to define,
the possible role of writers or these sorts of things, but I wrote some
suggestions. "In dark times," I wrote, "let's be skillful enough to
learn how to fly in the darkness like bats. Let's be healthy enough to
vomit the lies we are obliged to swallow each day. Let's be brave
enough to have the courage to be alone and brave enough to choose the
risk of being together, because teeth have no use out of the mouth and
fingers make no sense without hands. Let's be experienced enough to
know that we may be compatriots and contemporaries of all who have a
will of beauty and a will of justice no matter where they were born or
when they lived, because we don't believe in the borders of maps or
time. Let’s be stubborn enough to go on believing, against
all evidence, that the human condition is worth the trouble, because we
are badly done, quite wrong, but we are still unfinished. Let's be
crazy enough to be called crazy, like the Argentinian Madres de la
Plaza de Mayo, the locas, the nuts, who refused to forget in times of
obligatory amnesia. And let's be clever enough m be disobedient when we
receive orders in contradiction with our conscience or against common
sense.
ROY: I'm going to also read a little bit from an essay, (The End of
Imagination) I wrote about India's nuclear tests in 1998. But before I
do that, the last time I was in New York, I was invited to be on The
Charlie Rose Show. So when I went there, in the studio he sat me down
and said--I could tell that it was going to be a very aggressive
interview. So he said, “Arundhati, do you believe that India
should have nuclear weapons?" So I said, "I don't believe that anyone
should have nuclear weapons. I don't think India should have nuclear
weapons, I don't think the U.S. should have nuclear weapons, and I
don't think Israel should have nuclear weapons." He said, "That's not
what I asked you. I said, do you believe that India should have nuclear
weapons?" So I said, "Look, I don't think India should have nuclear
weapons, and I don't think the U.S. should have nuclear weapons, and I
don't think Israel"--he said, "Will you answer the question? Should
India have nuclear weapons?" So I said, "I don't think India should
have nuclear weapons, and I don't think"--and then I said, "Look, can
you explain to me why you're being so aggressive? I've answered your
question." At which point something collapsed and he just looked
stricken and said, "But can you tell me what you think about world
poverty?" or something. Anyway, the interview was never telecast.
But this was written in 1998. It really marked a change in what
happened or the part that India has taken very, very seriously. Now
that has been injected into its veins: the militarism, the nationalism,
the communalism. It's all there, regardless of what government comes or
goes.
"The desert shook,' the Government of India informed us, its people.
'The whole mountain turned white,' the Government of Pakistan replied.
By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3:45 p.m. the
timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300 metres deep in the
earth the heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees
centigrade, the temperature of the sun.
Instantly, rocks weighing a thousand tons, a mini-mountain underground,
vaporized.., shockwaves from the blast began to lift a mound of earth
the size of a football field by several meters. One scientist on seeing
it said, 'I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill.'
This was a quote from India Today.
May 1998, it will go down in history books, provided, of course, we
have history books to go down in. Provided, of course, we have a
future. "There is nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear
weapons. And there can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of
fiction to have to do than to restate a case that has, over the years,
already been made by other people in other parts of the world, and made
passionately, eloquently, and knowledgeably.
I am prepared to grovel, to humiliate myself abjectly, because in the
circumstances silence would be indefensible. So those of you who are
willing, let's pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes, and
speak our secondhand lines in this sad, secondhand play. But let's not
forget that the stakes we're playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our
shame could mean the end of us. The end of our children and our
children's children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within
ourselves and find the strength to think. To fight.
"If only, if only, nuclear war was just another kind of war.
If only it was about the usual things, nations and territories, gods
and histories. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which
countries battle countries and men battle men. But it isn't. If there
is nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each
other. Our foe will be the earth herself. The very elements--the sky,
the air, the land, the wind and water--will all turn against us, Their
wrath will be terrible. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages
will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become
fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to bum
has burned... Radioactive fallout will seep through the earth and
contaminate groundwater. Most living things, animal and vegetable, fish
and fowl, will die... What shall we do then, those of us who are still
alive, burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous
carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we
eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?
"In early May 1998, before the bomb, I left home for three weeks. In
New York I met a friend of mine whom I have always loved for, among
other things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness
bordering on savageness. "I've been thinking about you," she said,
"about The God of Small Things, what's in it, what's over it, under it,
around it, above it." She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not
at all sure that I wanted to heal" the rest of what she had to say.
She, however, was sure that she was going to say it.
"In this last year, less than a year actually, you've had too much of
everything-fame, money, prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation,
ridicule, love, hate, anger, envy, generosity everything. In some ways
it's a perfect story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is
that it has, or can have, only one perfect ending." Her eyes were on
me, bright with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew
what she was going to say. She was going to say that nothing that
happened to me in the future could ever match the buzz of this. That
the whole of the rest of my life was going to be vaguely dissatisfying.
And, therefore, the only perfect ending to the story would be death, my
death.
'"You've lived too long in New York,' I told her. 'There are other
worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible.
Honourable. Sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which
recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth.
There are plenty of warriors that I know and love, people far more
valuable than myself, who go to war each day knowing in advance that
they will fail. True, they are less 'successful' in the most vulgar
sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled. 'The only dream
worth having,' I told her, 'is to dream that you live while you're
alive and die only when you're dead.' Which means exactly what? I tried
to explain but didn't do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to
write to think.
"So I wrote it down for her on
a paper napkin. And this is what I wrote. 'To love, to be loved, to
never forget your own insignificance, to never get used to the
unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To
seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never
simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect
strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To
never look away. And never, never to forget.'" Thank you.
For more information contact www.internationalsocialist.org
Outro music- Nusrat Fateh All Khan "Dheyar-e ishq main"
Other AR Arundhati Roy programs A Writer's Place in Politics
The God of Small Things Globalization and Terrorism
Imperial Democracy
Confronting Empire
The New Delhi Interviews
The LA Interviews
Public Power in the Age of Empire Seize the Time!
The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile In Conversation with Howard Zinn
For information about obtaining CDs, MP3s, cassettes or transcripts of
this or other programs, please contact:
David Barsamian
Alternative Radio
P.O. Box 551
Boulder, CO 80306-0551
(800)444-1977
info@alternativeradio.org
www.altemativeradio.org
©2006