Munich American
Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 10. September 2007
Alternative Radio
Johann Galtung
Der Niedergang des amerikanischen Imperiums
Santa Barbara, Kalifornien, 22. November 2004
Der norwegische Friedensforscher
Johann Galtung ist einer der führenden Verfechter gewaltfreier
Konfliktlösungen .Der Träger des Alternativen Nobelpreises
ist Gründungsdirektor von „Transcend“ einem weltweiten
Netz zur Konfliktlösung. Sein bekanntestes Buch heißt
„Friede mit friedlichen Mitteln“. Seine Rede vom November
2004 in Santa Barbara hat im Sommer 2007 nichts von ihrer
Aktualität verloren.
Imperialismus ist das von militärischem Muskelspiel begleitete
Streben nach grenzüberschreitender wirtschaftlicher, politischer
und kultureller Vorherrschaft. So erklärte zum Beispiel das
Pentagon, dass es die Aufgabe der US Army sei, ohne Rücksicht auf
mögliches Blutvergießen, die Welt für amerikanisches
Business und eine kulturelle Wende sicher zu machen .Genau das erleben
wir gerade, denn man kann das Blutbad von Falludscha nicht
losgelöst sehen von Paul Bremers Anordnung Nr. 39, wonach die
gesamte irakische Staatswirtschaft zu privatisieren sei und danach zu
100 % in ausländische Hände übergehen könne, ohne
den Irak an möglichen Gewinnen zu beteiligen. Was damit gemeint
ist, illustrieren 14 amerikanische Stützpunkte.
Seit 1945 sollen in 70 Militärintervention zwischen 12 bis 16
Millionen Menschen umgekommen sein. Woher kommt diese Differenz?
Unterscheidet man zwischen offenen und verdeckten Aktionen? Oder
gehört das zum Imperialismus?.
Sollten die USA jedoch ihren Weltherrschaftsanpruch aufgeben wollen,
dann heißt es für sie: Stoppt das Töten und
schließt die Militärbasen.
Stoppt die Ausbeutung durch unfaire Handelsabkommen, denn täglich
verhungern 125 000 Menschen oder sterben an eigentlich harmlosen
Krankheiten. Diese Zahl multipliziert mit 365 Tagen, ergibt fast 50
Millionen Tote jährlich. Nicht für alle sind allein die USA
verantwortlich, aber sie sind es, die die Militärmaschinerie am
Laufen halten und mit Militärgewalt jedes Ausscheren zu verhindern
wüßten. Warum versucht man Hugo Chavez zu stürzen,
während man seinen Vorgänger Jimenez gewähren
ließ, warum die Mordanschläge auf Fidel Castro aber keine
auf Batista?. Warum ist man gegen die Sandinistas aber nicht gegen
Somoza?. Die Antwort auf diese Fragen gibt die oben erwähnte
Pentagon Aussage. Darum, Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika, kommt heraus
aus eurer Isolation und helft mit, diese Welt zu einem besseren Ort
für 6,2 Milliarden Menschen zu machen. Trotz ihrer Mängel,
respektiert die UN! Torpediert nicht das Kyoto-Protokoll, verbessert es!
Haltet euch an das ABM Abkommen und baut kein neues nationales
Raketenabwehrsystem auf. Werdet Teil der Welt und öffnet euch
für ihre faszinierende kulturelle Vielfalt, und ihr werdet der
größte Gewinner des Niedergangs des US Imperiums sein. Ihr
wäret enorme Kosten los und frei von großen Ängsten und
nach einem Prozess der Versöhnung müsstet ihr nicht
fürchten, für eure Untaten zur Rechenschaft gezogen zu werden
Nehmen wir Deutschland als Beispiel, das während des Naziregimes
25 Länder besetzte und: Juden, "Zigeuner" und Slawen ausrotten
wollte. Sie töteten 26 Millionen Russen, 6 Millionen Juden und
eine nicht bekannte Anzahl von Sinti und Roma, und doch unterhält
Deutschland heute mit den Nachkommen dieser Mordopfer wieder gute
Beziehungen.
Ich liebe die US amerikanische Republik - trotz Bush - aber ich hasse
das US Imperium. Nach einer Umfrage lehnen 80% der Muslime die
amerikanische Außenpolitik ab, aber auch 80% von ihnen bewundern
die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika.
- 2 -
1980 habe ich vorausgesagt, dass in 10 Jahren die Berliner Mauer fallen
und die Sowjetunion untergehen würde. Die Sowjetunion ging unter,
weil ihre Satelliten und Mitgliedsstaaten nach Unabhängigkeit oder
Autonomie strebten, weil die Unterschiede zwischen Stadt und Land, und
zwischen der sozialistischen Bourgeoisie und der sozialistischen
Arbeiterklasse immer weiter auseinander klafften und, weil es zwar
genügend Geld, aber kein ausreichendes Warenangebot gab. Doch vor
allem ging es um Freiheit und Menschenrechte.
Das US-Imperium wird nicht nur wegen der wirtschaftlichen,
militärischen, politischen und kulturellen Konflikten untergehen,
sondern auch wegen der wachsenden sozialen Kluft zwischen Staat und
Geldaristokratie, Arbeitsplatzbesitzern und Arbeitslosen und nicht
zuletzt auch zwischen Alt und Jung.
Die wirtschaftlichen Konflikte betreffen Wachstum, ungleiche
Vermögensverteilung, Geldwirtschaft, Produktion, Konsum und
Naturschutz. Eine von schwindenden Ölressourcen abhängige
Wirtschaft wird weitere Ölvorkommen mit Militärgewalt
erschließen. Die zentralasiatischen Ölländer grenzen an
Russland, China und Indien. Dort leben 40% der Weltbevölkerung und
ihre Gier nach Öl ist unermesslich. Mit der Energiefrage gehen der
Klimawandel und die Welterwärmung einher. Weil die USA das Kyoto
Protokoll nicht unterschrieben haben, macht man Washington nun pauschal
für alle Umweltschäden verantwortlich.
John F. Kerry, den man „Jeden, nur nicht Bush“ nannte,
hatte ein gutes Programm. Ihm ging es nicht um verstaubte Familienwerte
und fundamentalistische Moral, sondern um Windmühlen und
Sonnenkollektoren, aber dafür konnte sich das von Gott
erwählte Volk nicht. so recht erwärmen.
Obwohl oder gerade weil ich kein Wirtschaftsfachmann bin, sage ich
voraus, dass die USA - wie schon 2001, als die New Economy Blase platze
- wieder kurz vor einem größeren Kollaps stehen. Die
Kapitalwirtschaft wächst und wächst, während die
Produktion hinterher hinkt. Je höher der Dow Jones steigt, um so
mehr näheren wir uns der Krise. Der Kursverlust des US Dollars
zeigt, wie sehr das Vertrauen in die US Wirtschaft gesunken ist. Weil
60% der amerikanischen Wertpapier sich in den Händen einiger
asiatischer Unternehmen befinden, wird der Irakkrieg praktisch von
China und Japan finanziert. Das Defizit wächst täglich um 2
Milliarden Dollar.. Eventuell könnte man mit dem billigen Dollar
die Exporte erhöhen und so den freien Fall vermeiden. Doch dieses
Instrument versagt, weil weltweit der Boykott amerikanischer Waren
zunimmt. In Deutschland ging der Verkauf von Coca Cola um 16%
zurück und es kriselt bei McDonald’s, General Motors und
Ford.. Disneyland Paris ist pleite, Die Zahl ausländischer
Studenten ging um 4,2 % zurück. Dabei dürften die
ärgerlichen neuen Grenzkontrollen keine geringe Rolle spielen. Und
das ist nur der Anfang. Es handelt es sich keineswegs um einen
organisierten Boykott, sondern um den Ausdruck einer inneren Ablehnung
und um einen moralischen Appell.. Man braucht sich nur anzusehen, wie
Nichtamerikaner gewählt hätten. Nur drei Länder
hätten für Bush gestimmt – alle anderen für Kerry.
Die Bush-Wähler waren Polen, die Philippinen und Nigeria. In
Indien ginge die Wahl fiftyfifty aus. Das Abstimmungsergebnis von Polen
und den Philippinen ist religiös begründet. Für Indien
zählt der gemeinsame Feind Islam. Aber dennoch wird es den USA
kaum gelingen, die drohende Allianz zwischen Indien ,Russland und China
zu verhindern. Aus Angst vor US-Bomben, würde kein Land
öffentlich zum Boykott aufrufen, so, beschränken sich die US
Exporte auf das, was die Regierungen kaufen, Und damit sie
möglichst viel – besonders möglichst viele Waffen
- kaufen, schafft man möglichst viele Brandherde. Drosselt man die
Importe, fehlen der verarmten Arbeiterschaft die billigen Waren aus
China und Ostasien. Steigen die Preise schneller als die Löhne,
werden die Reichen reicher, aber die Armen bleiben auf der Strecke.
Umverteilung, nicht fromme Sprüche, wären ein möglicher
Ausweg aus der Krise, doch das kommt unter Bush nicht in Frage.
- 3-
Kommen wir zu den militärischen Konflikten.. 1999 habe ich das
Ende des US Imperiums für das Jahr 2025 vorausgesagt, dank der
gegenwärtigen Bush-Regierung dürfte es bereits 2015 soweit
sein. Wenn Terror mit Staatsterror beantwortet wird, wenn
unzählige Menschen sterben müssen, dann läßt die
Reaktion nicht lange auf sich warten. Multiplizieren Sie jeden
von US Truppen getöteten Menschen mit dem Faktor 10 seiner
trauernden Angehörigen und Freunde dann sind Sie nicht bei 12 oder
15 Millionen, sondern 150 Millionen Opfern. Kein Wunder dass sich unter
ihnen mühelos 19 Araber finden lassen, die etwas dagegen
unternehmen möchten.
Ich glaube jedoch, dass der 11. September mehr als ein reiner Racheakt
war, Nicht Menschen, zwei Gebäude sollten öffentlich
hingerichtet werden, als symbolische Strafe für die
militärische Intervention, die .Stationierung von Juden und
Christen auf heiligem Boden und die Verführung Saudi Arabiens
durch westlichen Konsum.
Da sich immer mehr Länder aus der Koalition der Willigen
zurückziehen und immer weniger NATO Staaten irakische Offiziere
ausbilden wollen, werden die USA bald allein sein. Für jene, die
die US Republik lieben, geht es nicht mehr um einen ehrenhaften Abzug,
sondern allein um einen Abzug, der den Irakern hilft, auf eigenen
Füßen zu stehen. Dazu sollten Japan und die Europäische
Union mit dem irakischen Widerstand Kontakt aufnehmen und eine Art
Helsinki-Sicherheitskonferenz ins Leben rufen, mit den USA als
Beobachter und mit dem Ziel einer unabhängigen, demokratischen
irakischen Föderation aus Kurden, Sunniten und Schiiten und Kuweit
als assoziiertem Mitglied. Um das zu erreichen, müssen alle
Ausländer das Land verlassen und jegliche Einmischung beenden. Der
Irak ruft Erinnerung an Vietnam wach. Damals behaupteten alle, dass
Vietnam nach dem Abzug der USA in Bürgerkrieg und Chaos versinken
würde. Nichts davon ist eingetreten.
Die ehemaligen Alliierten Deutschland, Frankreich und Spanien haben
sich bereits von den USA abgewendet. Russland, Indien und China
könnten der Schauplatz eines 4. Weltkrieges werden. Eine
gemeinsame europäische Armee wäre für viele eine
durchaus attraktive Alternative zur NATO, und dies obwohl 18 der 25 EU
Staaten im 2. Weltkrieg Opfer der brutalen deutschen Besetzung waren.
Auch das gespannte Verhältnis zwischen den USA und den Vereinten
Nationen hat weltweit Konsequenzen.
Und dann gibt es noch die kulturellen Konflikte. Juden und Christen
stehen 1,3 Milliarden Muslime gegenüber, die nicht länger die
von uns in den Wüstensand gezogenen Grenzen respektieren wollen.
Die Tragik dieser wunderbaren, einander so ähnlichen drei
Religionen besteht darin, dass sie auf beiden Seiten brillante
Fundamentalisten mobilisierten, denen in den Elfenbeintürmen von
Harvard; Yale und Berkeley keine Beachtung geschenkt wird.
Jüdische und christliche Fundamentalisten ziehen bereits an einem
Strang. Vielleicht wird es Europa sogar eines Tage gelingen, auch den
Islam zu umarmen. Zum Schrecken der USA befürwortet die
Europäische Gemeinschaft eine ostasiatische Union der
buddhistische und konfuzianische Länder wie Japan, Korea,
China, Taiwan und vielleicht auch Vietnam angehören könnten.
Darum, liebes Washington, lies die Zeichen an der Wand. Führe
keine Kriege gegen das, was unaufhaltsam kommen wird, sondern mach mit.
Bald könnte es auch eine asiatische Einheitswährung geben,
vielleicht sogar eine Weltwährung, aber das wird ganz bestimmt
nicht der Dollar sein. Seine Zeit ist vorbei..
Als im Februar 2003 12 Millionen Menschen dem Aufruf des
Weltsozialforums von Porto Alegre und Bombay folgten und an 600 Orten
friedlich protestierten, bezeichnete sie Bush nur als unbedeutende
Randgruppe. Spätestens damals wurde es leider vielen klar, dass
man in den USA nur die Sprache der Gewalt versteht.
Wie aus Liebe Hass werden kann, habe ich 1945 selbst erlebt. Für
meine Familie haben nicht die Amerikaner und Engländer den Krieg
gegen die verhaßten Nazis gewonnen, sondern die glühend
verehrte Sowjetunion. Aber nach und nach wurde uns bewußt, welche
furchtbaren Verbrechen auch Stalin begangen hatte. So ergeht es heute
dem amerikafreundlichen Europa. Man wehrt sich vehement gegen Kritiker
wie mich und klammert sich an die Hoffnung, dass man ja nur Bush los
werden müsse und alles wäre wieder in schönster Ordnung.
Hoffen wir, dass nicht aus enttäuschter Liebe eines Tages
blindwütiger Antiamerikanismus erwächst....
JOHANN GALTUNG
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Santa Barbara, California 22 November 2004
Johann Galtung of Norway is a leading
advocate of non-violent solutions to resolving conflicts. He is founder
and director of Transcend, a global network for conflict resolution.
Among his many books are Choose Peace and Peace by Peaceful Means. He
is the winner of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the
Alternative Nobel Prize.
Let me start by defining an empire. It's a trans-border concerted
effort to exercise economic, political, culture dominance, pinned up,
puffed up by military efforts. So it is, if you will, fourdimensional:
economic, political, cultural, military. In the particular U.S. case,
there is a planner in the Pentagon who formulated it much more clearly
than I can in a very famous, very quoted statement, The purpose of the
U.S. Army is to make the world safe for American business and for
cultural assault. Toward that end, there will be a fair amount of
killing. We see that going on right now. I don't think it makes sense
to see Falluja without quoting directive number 39 by L. P. Bremer III
(former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority) that very clearly
calls for the privatization of all businesses owned by the Iraqi state,
with the possibility of 100% acquisition by foreigners and 100%
repatriation of any profit. The 14 bases being built in Iraq may then
serve as an illustration. I think even the Pentagon planner missed out
on one point. The purpose of the U.S. Army is to make the world safe
for American business and for political dominance, and in addition to
that, for the cultural assault. Now, is it a fair amount of killing?
The 70 military interventions after 1945 have led to the killing of
between 12 and 16 million. That is probably a relatively low estimate.
Why is it so imprecise, between 12 and 16? It's the difference between
overt action and covert action. Let us now say that we have that as a
model of what imperialism is about.
How would we know that that empire is dead? If we have four dimensions,
we have four criteria. Let us say that these are the things that the
rest of the world would like to see. Point one, stop killing and
withdraw military bases. Point two, stop exploiting. And that means
stop extremely unjust, inequitable economic deals. I quoted one
example, directive number 39 in Iraq, just as one example. But,
unfortunately, the implications are worse than that, because 125,000
people are dying every day of hunger and of easily preventable and
curable diseases. If you take that and you multiply it by 360 days, you
start coming close to 50 million per year. Not all of that is laid at
the doorstep of the United States of America. But the interesting thing
about the United States of America is that they are the ones who keep
the military machinery going that makes it difficult to change it. So
when there is an effort to change it, there will very likely be a coup
instigated by the U.S. and with a military follow-up.
We can now go through the whole post World-War history and document
this, and we can ask questions like, Why is there an effort to overturn
Chavez but not his predecessor a couple of generations ago, Jimenez?
Why the effort to kill Castro but not Batista? Why is it against the
Sandinistas but not against Somoza? And the answer is very clear, and
it lies in the brilliant formulation by the Pentagon planner.
So we go on to number three, join the world. You're not located on a platform named exceptionalism. Join the world.
Participate in the difficult enterprise of making the world a better
place to live for 6.2 billion human beings. The best organization for
that today is the U.N., with all its shortcomings.You don't step out of
the Kyoto Protocol; you invite the conference to revise it. If you have
grievances, and there are shortcomings in that protocol, you don't step
out of the ABM treaty, the antiballistic missile treaty; you come up
with a system that provides the same level of security as that one did.
You don't step out of it and introduce the NMD(National Missile
Defense) instead. Join the world means that you see yourself as a
normal country.
And that leads to the cultural aspect of the empire. Give up the idea
of being a chosen people by God with a direct mandate and that you
somehow have the solution to all problems. To antidote, the opposite of
this, is called dialogue. In other words, dialogue, for the political
aspect, participation. For the economic aspect, equity. And then how
about the military aspect? Instead of seeing security problems all
over, and there are some security problems, shift your attention. See
conflicts all over the place. Instead of building strength, try to
solve them. It's possible. It can be done. But in order to do it, you
have to give up one idea, namely, that the other party is born evil,
will continue to remain evil, and that the only remedy is to crush and
exterminate.
Unfortunately, these four aspects hang together, so I think what the
world is demanding is in one sense a tall bill. In another sense, it is
not that terribly difficult. Stop killing, withdraw your bases, have
equitable economic deals, join the world, for all its multilateralism
and slowness, and enter into dialogue with a fascinating variety of
civilizations. It can be done. Most countries try to do it, more or
less perfectly. If this should happen, the greatest beneficiary from
the decline and fall of the U.S. Empire would be the United States of
America. It would blossom. Why?
First of all, it would get rid of an enormous economic burden. All of
us know a little bit about the costs of empire in economic terms. But
secondly, it would get rid of an enormous amount of fear. And that fear
is based on a mechanism, which is ridiculously simple. One day all
these people that we have bossed and bullied and killed will come back
and do the same to us. Since there have been 240 military interventions
since Thomas Jefferson started in Libya, there are lots of people who
might dream of vengeance. In order to get out of that, you withdraw
your tentacles and you start processes of reconciliation.
Let me give an example. Germany occupied 25 countries during Nazism and
tried to exterminate three nations: the Jews, the Sinta Roma, and the
Slavs. They had a program for eliminating 100 million Slavs, 50 million
by killing and 50 million by starvation, mainly Russian Slavs, to empty
the 2 territory for a German colony. They took the lives of 26 million
Russians, 6 million Jews, and an unspecified number of Sinta Roma. If
you take 25 occupied countries plus three nations, you get 28. Today,
Germany has good relations with, practically speaking, all 28.
What I've said so far is that an empire is a very clear construct.
There is no mystery what it is about. And it is the synergy between the
four dimensions that makes it. The abolition of the empire is not a
question of hoisting and unhoisting a flag at midnight. That was the
old way of doing it.
They are four very clear demands, and they are very reasonable. The
greatest beneficiary would be the United States of America. And I stand
on exactly the same line as Gore Vidal: I love the U.S. republic and I
hate the U.S. empire.
Please never fall into the temptation of calling someone who criticizes
the U.S. Empire anti-American. It's exactly because we foreigners make
that distinction that we are in a position to be honest and say what I
exactly said. The public opinion polls among Muslims showing that more
than 80% reject U.S. foreign policy and more than 80% admire the United
States of America, it's entirely consistent. You can say, don't you get
into difficulties when you see the number of people who support Bush?
We get into some small difficulties. But you can have difficulties with
all countries, you see, including my own, little Norway. But I'm
perfectly capable of loving my country without admiring Quisling, and I
can love Russia without admiring Stalin. In order to make those
distinctions, you actually need only two cells in your brain. But if
you have only one cell in your brain, it starts getting problematic.
Let us now take this construct, the U.S. Empire, and then we introduce
an approach to social science called dialectic. Don't confuse it with
Marxism. Marxism was a very poor type of dialectic. It's a Chinese
concept. Don't confuse it with Greece, with Heraclitus. It is Taoism,
it's in Jung. To every force there is a counterforce. Don't confuse it
with Newton. There is no guarantee it will be exactly opposite and that
it will be of the same magnitude. But there will be a counterforce.
Which, incidentally, is the reason that the worst game a political
elite can play is golf, because it's a linear agenda. You see those 18
holes, fill them. In the real world, the holes move, they make
alliances, they cover up, they shoot the ball back, and worse. Suddenly
the 18 holes surround the player, start digging a hole, a quagmire for
the player to fall into. That's what the world is like. Now put the
politician into a golf course, and you get an incompetent one as a
result. That doesn't mean that he cannot do it in brilliant, short
time, but he's in for some surprises called dialectic. I have a list
here of 14 counter forces to the U.S. empire.
But I'll first make propaganda for my predictive ability. In 1980, I
made a prediction, with a list of five counter forces against the
Soviet empire, that the Berlin Wall will fall within ten years and the
Soviet empire will fall. One of the places I made that prediction was
in Moscow. It was not excessively popular. But one guy came up to me
afterwards and said, “What makes you think that we will last as
much as ten years? What makes you think that?” So I said,
“Well, you know these five contradictions need their time to
synergize and synchronize and work themselves through the
system.” And he said, “Five? There are many more, but I
don't care to tell you.” It fell. It happened.
I can mention to you which the five were. Number one is very simple,
between the Soviet Union and the satellites who wanted independence.
Number two, between Russia and the other parts of the Soviet Union who
wanted autonomy. Number three, between town and countryside in the
Soviet construction. Number four, between the socialist bourgeoisie and
the socialist working class. And number five, between liquidity and
lack of goods. And you can then see all these five working. How about
freedom? Freedom is in the first two. How about human rights? In the
first two, maybe the third two. For me to talk about contradictions
they have to be concrete social forces, not words but forces.
I could now read for you the 14, but I would rather take them first in
groups. Economic, military, political, and cultural contradictions. You
guessed that one because those are the four that I mentioned for
imperialism. And then there is something I call social contradictions,
which are concrete social forces building up. And among them I have
between state and capital elites and working classes, unemployed, and
contract workers, on the one hand; and on the second hand, between the
older and middle generation and youth. I have this in two ways: the
global scene and domestically in the U.S.
Let us now simply get started with economic contradictions. I have
three: between growth and distribution; between productive and finance
economy; and between production/distribution/ consumption and nature.
Start with the third one. Peak oil. In an economy desperately in need
of oil, with very few serious attempts to move in other directions,
with the peak oil phenomenon of increasing costs and increasing
difficulties finding exploitable places, there will be increasing
military warfare to conquer other places. Many of them are in Central
Asia. Hence contradiction number six, which is with the biggest
countries in Asia: Russia, China, and India. The oil fields border on
them. They are also hungry for oil. It's 40% of humanity. So number
three spills into number six. I just give it as an example of the type
of synergies you get when you list the contradictions. Climatic
changes, global warming. The way in which the U.S. is held accountable
exactly by stepping out of the Kyoto Protocol. And you will, of course,
remember that people are not necessarily very subtle. When you get into
the habit of blaming the U.S., the U.S. will be blamed for everything.
Sometimes even I will come up and say, “Look, look, look. That's
going a little bit too far. Not that one. There are some other crooks
in the world. Not all the crooks live in Washington. You have to have
more diverse perspective on the world.”
At this point there was a guy called ABB, Anybody But Bush, who was
also known as John F. Kerry, who had, I think, a very good and
admirable program. I would guess that many Americans agreed with him on
that one, but it didn't take top priority. Other things had top
priority. What? I'll give you my best hunch. This is a footnote, an
aside. If you believed that you are the chosen people by God, then you
would also believe that God protects you. If God protects you, 9/11
would never have happened. That means God did not protect you, because
he would have stopped the planes in the air like the Kamikaze, wind,
that came and stopped the Mongol invasion of Japan at the end of the
13th century. Anyhow, 9/11 happened. Why?
Because Americans hadn't kept their side of the covenant. What was the
covenant? The Ten Commandments. What do Americans do? Same-sex marriage
and abortion, 3 Californication. So, given that, what is the way to
regain God's protection? What could be more important than God's
protection? And then some guy comes and starts talking about windmills,
solar collectors. Sounds like petty stuff relative to moral and family
values. But I'm then saying that I don't think there are moral and
family values with just norms to regulate social intercourse. I'm
saying that it had a deeper existential, fundamentalist root, and that
that is the country in which we are in this moment right now.
Number two was between productive and finance economy. It works the
following way. That if you have a very rapid growth in the finance
economy, meaning the stocks are doing fine, the dollar is surging, but
at the same time you have nothing corresponding in the productive
economy, but a sluggish economy with a low growth rate, then the
asynchrony between the finance economy and the productive economy will
hit back and take the form of a crash. The last time that happened was
2001, between the so-called new economy and the reality. It's the gap
between the finance economy and the productive economy. I predicted it
two years ahead of time. And I have one advantage in my life. I'm not
trained as an economist, so it is so much easier to see reality. When
you have to see it through the type of crazy training these guys get,
it becomes very difficult. I admire any economist who nevertheless
could talk sense. There are not many of them, but it happens.
So, having said that sweet, charming little how-to-makefriends remark,
then let me just say the following. I think the U.S. is in for a rather
major crash, and I'll give you one hint. Whenever you read that the Dow
Jones is going up, you are closer to the crisis, unless there is a
corresponding surge in the productive economy, which there will not be.
One particular financial instrument has taken the dive already, the
dollar. What does this mean? That there is no confidence in the dollar
given that 60% of U.S. bonds are owned by a couple of Asian economies,
that China and Japan are financing the war in Iraq, that the deficits,
I say now both a fiscal and the total deficit, are enormous and
increasing all the time, $2 billion per day. Given that, you have lack
of confidence. This lack of confidence will then increase exponentially
to a possible free fall.
How is the country going to overcome that? There are two possibilities.
One is the official one that any economist, any bookkeeper can point
out. You use the cheap dollar in order to increase your exports. What's
wrong about that one? What's wrong about that one is what I call the
social contradictions.
And it may not be very well known in the U.S., but the point is simply
the following: that there is today an economic boycott of U.S. goods
spreading very quickly around the world. Lester Brown recently reported
that eight of the ten leading U.S.
product brands are American. More than half of the sales each of these
products are outside the United States. The Financial Times reports
that some of the world's strongest consumer brands, like Coca-Cola,
McDonald's, and GAP, are being hit hard. Coca-Cola sales in Germany
dropped 16% from the similar period last year.
McDonald's is in crisis, Disneyworld in Paris is bankrupt, GM and Ford
in Germany are about to close, and so on and so forth. This is not good
news if you want to strengthen your economy by more exports. There is
much more to come, and I'm not going to report all of that. I'm just
going to say that this is not an organized boycott. It's much worse. It
is a feeling of disgust. And this feeling of disgust makes Coca-Cola
taste bad.
There are medical reasons for that, an idiotizing, fattening, tepid,
seeping liquid. But leaving those aside, this feeling is spreading.
In order to understand that feeling better, we have to look at those
data that you all know more or less about how did people vote when they
were asked, How would you vote if you were an American and were
participating in the elections today? Well, you have probably seen it.
It is reported. Here is a world map with the votes, and it's correctly
made red and blue. It's a strange distribution of colors. We're not
used to that one in Europe that way. But anyhow, we can take many
things. Of all the countries outside Europe on this map, there are
three countries favorable to Bush. The other ones were all favorable to
ABB. And the countries favorable to Bush were Poland, the Philippines,
and Nigeria. India was about equal.
Poland and the Philippines have one thing in common with Bush: together
with America, those are the countries that get the highest score if you
add up the number of people who believe in God and the number of people
who believe in Satan. If you do that for the U.S., you have to add 94
and 71, and you get, of course, 165. If you take similar processes for
Poland and Philippines, you get about the same. But the U.S. is number
one in believing in Satan. There is no other country in the world that
believes that much in Satan. And in the Chicago Tribune's report, which was reported in the Yomurii Shimbun
in Japan, the 3rd of January this year, it is pointed out very clearly
that by Satan the pollsters made it very clear it's somebody who is on
full-time duty and interferes in your daily life. Now, Michael Moore
point that Americans are a frightened race I think misses the point,
misses the theological underpinning. So I am saying that I can explain
the Philippines and Poland theologically, and you should not see it as
political allegiance. So I take it as a theological statement. Nigeria
I simply don't understand. India I can understand was a tie, a common
an enemy of Muslims. That I think makes some kind of political sense
and has, of course, been the Bush administration's effort to circumvent
the alliance formation between Russia, India, and China, an alliance
formation which eventually will cost the U.S. very dearly.
Having said this, I am saying that the sentiment is of such a kind that
people are not going to buy American goods. That means the export
market is limited to what governments buy, because they don't dare
boycott because they might be bombed whereas a private guy who passes
Esso, Texaco, Mobil and, not to forget, Shell and just goes on to the
local pump, it's very difficult to bomb him. So the way they do it to
governments is to more or less coerce them to buy arms. In order to be
able to sell arms, you have to produce insecurity first. At that the
U.S.
can be relied upon, for producing the insecurity that at least
stimulates the arms trade. But having said that, even the most
lapdog-inclined government starts understanding the trick now.
Resistance builds up.
Having said that, I mentioned having difficulty with method number one
in handling the weak dollar, what's method number two? You could do it
with a very simple decree. You change the dollar bill overnight, and
anybody who has old dollars, goodbye. If you want to redeem your bonds,
try and come and get it. In other words, it may be that those bonds can
be written off as a loss. Ninety-two percent of the U.S. deficit is
covered by foreigners. Sixty percent of it is covered by Asian
countries, essentially Japan and China. Japan and China are covering
the wars of the United States of America in order to 4 guarantee their
export markets to make the U.S. solvent enough to pay for the products
they buy.
There is, of course, yet another method, which is to say not only we
export more or we change the currency and you're not going to get it
anyhow. The third one would be to import less. Try that with an
impoverished American working class, to deprive them of Chinese goods,
cheap East Asian goods. I don't think that is very workable. So
imagine, you screw the working class, you shift the wealth upwards to
the top 20%, or 1% for that matter, you have the Consumer Price Index
rise more than the wage index rises. You make the situation
deteriorate, like the data show. So what do you pay people when you
don't pay them dollars? You can pay them Jesus currency. You can say,
“Believe in Jesus and God will protect us again.” You can
also pay them in cheap Chinese goods. So imagine you cut off that
possibility. Then you're left with Jesus currency. There is another
method called redistribution. It's not going to be done by the Bush
administration. The country is in a squeeze.
The basic point about economic boycott is not a decline in profit. The
basic point is the moral challenge, that we get to the U.S.A. the way
they did to South Africa. U.S. companies abroad make an average profit
of 6%. That means a 6% boycott is sufficient to make them reconsider
their overseas investment. And that's the magnitude we have for the
brands I mentioned. Some will ask for U.S. military intervention. Since
this is done by private people and not by governments, it's not easy.
South Africa was in that situation, and both Mandela and the last white
president told me that what hit us and what worked was not the boycott
of apples—that was not important for our economy at all—but
it was the moral message, the message of disgust.
Foreign students coming to the U.S. went down 4.2% last year. There are many interpretations. One of them is U.S.
foreign policy. My wife and I passed into Los Angeles airport,
fingerprinting on both index fingers and highly scrutinized by some
interesting device. I did not like it. And I say it with no smile. I
didn't like it at all.
So let's go down the list. I mentioned the distribution and a few of
the economic factors. Let me take the next list, which is four, and
those are the military contradictions. By contradiction we mean that
the U.S. is pushing in one direction and, lo and behold, there is a
counterpush.
This is a list that I made in 1999 and made public with in 2000 with
the prediction that the U.S. empire is gone by the year 2025. You
remember my boasting of my Soviet prediction. Bush was elected in the
year 2000, and I reduced it by five years after having watched him for
a couple of months and defined him as a so-called accelerator of the
synergies and the synchronies. He is now re-elected. I have reduced it
by five more years. So you're now down to year 2015.
Number four is between U.S. state terrorism and terrorism. It is almost
unbelievable that an elite can believe that you can behave that way,
kill that many people, and there will be no reaction. It doesn't work
that way. So let us say that you multiply every person killed by U.S.
forces by a factor of 10: the number of friends, family, those who are
bereaved and feel something in their heart, a sting. So suddenly you're
up to not 12 to 16 million but 150 million. It's rather unbelievable
that some of those 150 million, for instance, 19 Arabs, shouldn't get
the idea of doing something about it.
And yet my interpretation of 9/11 is somewhat deeper than pure revenge.
My interpretation on 9/11 is the public execution of two buildings, not
the people in them. I don't think that was important to them. I think
it was the buildings. For having sinned against Allah, for having
intervened militarily, established bases with Jews and Christians in
them, and on top of that, for having foisted upon a Wahhabite Saudi
Arabia a consumerist lifestyle that they did not see as theirs.
So if you look at it this way, it looks like we are caught in a vicious
cycle between terrorism and state terrorism. How does that work right
now? I mentioned that five countries were pulling out of the coalition
of the willing. They have become unwilling. Six countries in NATO have
refused to train Iraqi officers. The numbers five and six will grow
quickly. I don't have time to go into that. I'm just saying that the
prediction is that the U.S. will be very alone. It's going badly, and
that means that those who love the U.S. republic are interested in how
do we help the U.S. get out. We're not concerned with getting out with
honor, but getting out in a way that in one sense teaches the U.S. a
lesson but in the other sense does something much more
important—an Iraq that could function. I’ll tick off
points. By countries like Japan and the European Union establishing
contact with the Iraqi resistance with the aim of having a conference
for security and cooperation in the Middle East after the model of the
Helsinki conference, the U.S. as an observer.
And as a possible point on the agenda an Iraqi federation, with Kuwait
as an associated member, independent country; as a federation, with
democracy and human rights, with the Kurds, who right now have
benefited from what has happened, having their part, the Sunnis having
their part but giving up the idea of being the instrument through which
foreigners can run Iraq, and the Shiva having an Islamic republic in
their part but giving up the idea of running all of Iraq according to
that pattern. The key to this is a federation. The obvious precondition
is very simple: all foreigners out. All the decrees made by the U.S.
administration, a puppet administration, declared null and void. We
start from the beginning with a free Iraq. It’s a tall bill.
When Iraq is mentioned, the word Vietnam often comes up. I remember so
clearly in the 1970s when everybody said that if the U.S. withdraws,
there would be civil war and chaos in Vietnam. They managed it
extremely well.
I go on to the next one, which is U.S. relative to the allies. The
allies are falling off. And they are rather important countries. We are
right now, of course, mainly talking about Germany, France, Spain. And
I could go through the rest of the list and make some predictions.
Number six is Russia, India, China. This could be the seat of the fourth world war that Norman Podhoretz is writing about in Commentary
in the September issue. They are coming closer than average. The U.S.
had a chance as long as the BJP was in power in India, because the BJP
had given up two onerous dictums: secularism and nonalignment. They
went in for Hindutva and were contemplating a NATO for Asia with the
United States. They lost the elections, to a large extent for that
reason. That was not reported by the mainstream press. As I said, 40%
of humanity. The United States is 6%.
We now go on to number seven, NATO versus the European Union army. This
is not necessarily to say that it is an independence declaration of the
United States, which of course it is. But it is also to say that the
European Union should be watched as a possible imperial successor. I'm
afraid of that. But for the United States it means that there is an
alternative source and that countries, one after the other, will leave
NATO, not 5 formally but informally, and go to the European Union. Let
me just add that of the 25 countries that Germany had occupied and
brutalized during the Second World War, 18 are members of the European
Union together with Germany. That's quite something. The U.S. will have
to devise quite a lot of textbooks, which was the German approach, in
order to create friends among the countries they have brutalized.
Number eight, the United States-United Nations. That it is tense we
know. The rift between the U.N. and the U.S. will not only be France;
it will be much more universal.
Then there are what I call cultural contradictions. Judaism,
Christianity on the one side against Islam. There are 1.3 billion
Muslims, and they have this unfortunate habit of not accepting the
borders that we have been drawing in the sand of the desert and things
of that type. It's high time we learned that. But leaving that point
aside, the tragedy of this religious divide of religions so similar,
with so much beauty in all three of them, mobilizing the
fundamentalists on both sides. The U.S. union of Jewish and Christian
fundamentalism is intellectually brilliant, as far as I've understood
it, reading rapture books and other books, and once being visiting
professor at the University of Virginia and Duke University, and each
week, traveling between Duke and the University of Virginia, passing
through Lynchburg. The name is not very promising, but the cafeteria
conversations are fantastic. And they brought me up to date with
Armageddon each time I bought a hamburger. And I was willing to buy
more than one hamburger in order to be in on Biblical time. What I
found, incidentally, in a footnote, was that my distinguished American
colleagues didn't know their own country. They were living in some
ghettos called Harvard and Yale and California, Berkeley, and places
like that. Not the slightest contact with their own country. Lynchburg
prevailed.
But leaving that aside, how did the Jews and the Christians come
together as fundamentalists? As far as I understand, by abolishing the
old contradiction between not accepting Jesus as messiah, on the Jewish
side, and seeing Jesus as God's son, on the Christian side. And the
formula was simple. The second coming of Jesus Christ is the first
coming of messiah.
Absolutely brilliant from the point of view of engineering a coalition,
but it leaves out dissent. Anybody who can build bridges between
Judaism and Christianity and Islam deserves more than one Nobel Peace
Prize. These bridges are being built in this European Union-OIC
flirtatious exercise, and it will, of course, take place. But the
European Union at the same time has very close cooperation with ASEAN,
and they are silently, softly fomenting an East Asian community of
Maharana, Buddhist, Confucian countries, Japan, the Korean peninsula,
China, Taiwan, of course, maybe Vietnam. In 1999 they had their first
conference: Why is there a Western European community and not an East
Asian community? I'm not going to debate. I'm just going to say these
things are coming. And this is one of the things that the U.S. resents
most, an East Asian community.
Dear Washington, there is the handwriting on the wall. Read it. Don't
try to fight it. It will come whatever you do. If you try to resist it,
it will come a little bit sooner. Join it.
Welcome it. And maybe one day there will be not only one Europe but one
Asia as a currency. Maybe one day it will be a global currency. But it
will not be dollars. That will not be the global currency. Its days are
past. They have peaked.
Having said that, there are two others that are not so significant, but
important. There are other civilizations that feel trampled upon by the
U.S., not only Islam. It is Hinduism; it is Taoism, Confucianism,
Buddhism in China; it is the Andean civilizations, the Incan, Mexican,
Aztec, the Mayan. There are grumblings and rumblings in all those
places, and the signals are nothing good for Washington.
This is, of course, also true for number twelve, the European elite
culture. The tremendous strength of U.S. culture has been its
vulgarity, its guaranteed plebeian nature, its reaching everybody. But
that not in an evil sense of the vulgarity of the Coca-Cola and the
hamburger, but also its universalism and generosity and its way of
embracing everybody if they're willing to play the game the way it has
been defined by the U.S. This is a weak one.
The contradictions that are the most important are growth versus
distribution, productive versus finance economy, economy versus nature,
terrorism versus state terrorism, U.S. versus Russia, India, China,
U.S. versus U.N., U.S. versus European Union, Judaism/Christianity
versus Islam, and the world opposition. The biggest demonstration in
human history was, of course, the 12 million people on the 15th of
February last year in 600 places in the world organized by the World
Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Bombay. To have 12 million people come out
in 600 places and then be wiped off the historical screen by Bush
saying these are focus groups, the conclusion drawn by people all over
the world is that the U.S. is not going to listen to words, that other
languages have to be used. The solution I'm speaking of, violence, is
not one generally accepted. Economic boycott then becomes the natural
way of doing it. Okay, if you don't listen, we are not going to take
you on and in. In that there is a message and you will read it. Sooner
or later it will come to you.
How does this work now in practice? I'll tell you a little story from
my own family. When I was 15, 1945, my sister and her coming husband
had been fighting very much against the German occupation, like we all
did. I was almost peeing in my pants carrying illegal papers to school,
distributing to another guy, and things of that kind. I barely managed
to escape to Sweden. I came back in October of 1945, to the great
delight of my parents and myself, and they announced we had become
Communists. I did not quite understand what this Communist stuff was,
but I asked my sister, “Why are you - what was it again?
Communist?” And she said, “For two reasons. The war against
Nazi Germany was not won by England and America; it was won by the
Soviet army. They were the ones who sacrificed. What the
Anglo-Americans did was to kill, kill, kill in bombing. Point two, the
Soviet Union is the only country that has taken the bottom of society
seriously and attended to their health and education,” and so on.
And I had learned something about dictatorship, so I said that, having
been through the war. And she said, “Yes, that's true, but that's
only a phase.”
So now the following happens. The first book denouncing the Soviet
Union and revealing the truth of Stalinism was by a Ukrainian named
Igor Gouzenko, who became a refugee in Canada, and his book was called
This Was My Choice.
Remember now that this was long before Solzhenitsyn. And you must see
me as a 15-year-old boy, and I'm observing my beloved sister. She took
that book and threw it on the wall. Bang. Whereupon, she picked it up
and started reading it. Phase one, total denial. “It's all
lies.” Phase two, “This Gouzenko is a 6 traitor. He's
probably paid by somebody.” Phase three, “Okay, okay, there
is something to it, but it's only because of Stalin. We get rid of
Stalin and everything will be okay.” Phase four, “Okay,
okay, okay, it was not only Stalin. Something in the structure was
wrong—one party, dictatorship for the proletariat.”
“Okay,” phase five, “the whole idea was wrong around
the beginning.” And then comes quite often phase six: blind
anti-Sovietism, totally incapable of appreciating some of the good
things they did, like supporting anticolonial wars. About all of these
you can ask question marks and there is the yin and yang, yin and yang,
yin and yang, yin and yang. And all of that is complicated once you
start analyzing it. But I lived through these phases in two persons I
loved.
I see exactly the same all over Europe now in relation to the United
States. They are really U.S.-philiacs, who will deny every sentence in
what I have just said. Next phase, I am a traitor. “It's probably
because he didn't get the position. He wanted to get foreign minister
and unfortunately he's not. So that's the reason why he talks the way
he did.” Look, I'm totally happy with the power I have in the
world, and I wouldn't like it decreased by being foreign minister in a
small country. Point three, this is not about the U.S., it's about
Bush. If we could only get rid of Bush, everything would be okay. And
if you have been protected by lack of knowledge about a country you
have adored and which has so many adorable characteristics, as I
mentioned, the U.S. republic, then you don't know that Kerry might even
in some regards have been worse. Point four, there is something wrong
in the whole structure. And up comes the anticapitalist critique, up
comes the anti-Pentagon, antimilitary critique. Point five, there is
something wrong in the whole culture. And that's when you start looking
at this chosen people kind of business. My friends, what's happening
now around the world is that people are going through these stages. And
they go through them quickly. I think it's important that it doesn't
end in blind anti-Americanism. So I stop and that point and the debate
begins. Thank you.
David Barsamian
Alternative Radio
P.O. Box 551
Boulder, CO 80306
(800) 444-1977
info@alternativeradio.org
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©2005