Starting with Seattle, on the Pacific coast of the United States, and during the ten years that separate it from Belà ©m, at the mouth of the Amazon river, which will host the next World Social Forum - an extraordinary revival of the civil society has taken place. Through all the Social Forums, the first one at Porto Alegre, and then the Social Forums that have been held on other continents, Mumbai, Nairobi, etc., we are now getting united. And the Brazilian comrades' preparatory committee told me that the problem is the extraordinary number of participants in Belà ©m. More than 200,000 people have registered, representing more than 8000 movements, trade unions, multiple social organizations, ranging from the Via Campesina movement for the landless, to the movement of resistance to the dictatorship of the global financial capital. (emphasis by translator)
Last year, the 500 largest private transcontinental companies controlled 52% of the gross world product, that is to say, all goods, services, patents, capital, in one year -across the globe. The dictatorship of the financial capital has now found its retaliation, its opponent, in the World Social Forum, which will be held this time in Belà ©m. Karl Marx said: "The revolutionary should be able to hear the grass grow." And beyond parties, beyond the norms of the individual states, the Forum is a force of opposition to the dictatorship of capital, altogether exceptional and mysterious.
Basta: You mention in your book the example of Bolivia, which illustrates the possibility of profound changes in the current system. You also mention the revival beginning in 2006 of the Non-Aligned Movement, which now has the capacity to influence international decisions. Can these developments help overcome the hurdles that originate from this hatred of the West and the issue of awakening memories, particularly in the functioning of the United Nations?
In my book, "Hatred of the West", there is a chapter on the intricacies of awakening memories in the post-colonial world. Something very mysterious is happening now and it is a resurgence of memories. I am a professor of sociology, and within the study of sociology, possibly the most mysterious and least understandable object of study, is the collective memory. For example, the Holocaust, the terrible genocide against the Jewish people made by the monster Nazis took three generations to emerge into the collective consciousness.
This is happening today with people of the South, the former colonies. The thing that is rising to the surface is the horror of slavery, it is the horror of colonization, the suffering. It's very strange. Slavery lasted 350 years, a mass deportation of 42 million Africans across the Southern Atlantic Ocean in a triangular trade. The last country to abolish slavery was Brazil in 1888. As for the horrors of the colonial era, these ended in the sixties, for most countries around the middle of the past century, the twentieth century. India became independent in 1947, African countries mostly in the sixties except for South Africa which became independent in 1994. So the horror was also experienced for generations and generations in the past.
And it is now that this awareness of past cruelties has surfaced that the Non-Aligned Movement is being formed [5]. The 127 Non-Aligned nations, the Bandung Conference of 1955: there was silence for a very long time, and now the Non-Aligned nations dominate the UN General Assembly. The OIC, the Organization of Islamic Conference (53 Muslim countries), which is in the midst of this renaissance, this resurgence of memory [of past domination], which becomes a social riposte, a political force. It's very very mysterious.
The title of my book may seem offensive. There have been many discussions with the publishers: Should it remain the "Hatred of the West"? It's shocking. Well, there is a pathological hatred which must be eliminated immediately - Al Qaeda, terrorism, etc., incidentally the very negation of the Koran, which is a book of love: terrorism that kills children does exactly the opposite even if it claims to have its roots in the Muslim faith. This pathology - and the state terrorism of Israel is rooted in the same kind of fanaticism this state or individual terrorism is a pathology that has to be combated. It can find no excuse or any mitigating circumstances.
But there is, and that's why my book is a book of hope, a resurgence of awareness of past exploitation [6], a reasoned hatred of the West, which rejects the dictatorship of financial capital, which demands reparation and repentance from the West which of course responds with the most complete blindness - and this hatred becomes a political force.
Example: Bolivia. After 500 years of genocide, massacres, oppression, of being silenced, for the first time in 500 years, an Indian, Evo Morales Ayma, a real Amero-Indian, a coca farmer from Yungas (a tropical department situated north of la Paz), with a magnificent Aymara head, and not an urban intellectual who uses the ethnic argument, is elected President (December 18, 2005). And in six months, supported by this wonderful identity movement, las Almas (the Souls), which has become a political force, he regains control over the second largest oil wealth in Latin America. He has imposed a totally new distribution and sharing of profits on Shell, Repsol, British Gas, Texaco. Until then, the Bolivian state received 5% and foreign companies 95%. Today, foreign companies get 18% and the Bolivian State gets 82%.
With the billions that flow into the treasury of Bolivia, the great campaigns are starting up against poverty, hunger, illiteracy, epidemics, polluted water. And what was until now the material darkness of the vast destitute majority of the 10 million Bolivians is changing radically. They have access to a dignified life. It is the resurgence of an awareness of past exploitation that has made this possible, and it definitely gives reason for hope. And I also hope the same thing will happen in many other countries.
Basta: As the Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food to the United Nations, now a member of the Consultative Council of Human Rights, you are a tireless advocate for oppressed peoples. You develop a severe critique of capitalism and the "extraordinary blindness" of the West. Despite the multiple crises and the deterioration of the situation, what drives you and makes you still hope that another world is possible?
Georges Bernanos [7] said: "God has no other hands than ours." Either we change this absurd and bruised world, or nobody will. I am a privileged among the privileged citizens of the Republic of Geneva [8], white, from a middle class family, Calvinist, I always ate my fill, I have a university education this incredible privilege, generally in the West and in democracies where free speech is possible or access to information is possible. For eight years I was a United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and now I am on the Advisory Committee for the Council of Human Rights.
When we have seen what I have seen, when we see the horror of what is euphemistically called underdevelopment, but is in fact the rule, "the enslavement, exploitation imposed by the Financial capital on the peoples of the South mainly, we can not - it's physiologically and psychologically impossible - return home to Geneva and say "listen, no, I saw what I saw, but hey, I am going to forget what I have seen." It is not possible. That's why this book wants to be a weapon and should help in a small way in awakening the consciousness of people in the West that we need so urgently.
Notes:
[1] For Jean Ziegler's biography, see "Jean Ziegler: "This World Order is not just murderous, it is absurd'" Interview with Jean Ziegler by Cathy Ceà ¯be. Translation and introduction by Siv O'Neall.
[2] BASTA! Information web site on environmental and social struggles (BASTA! Site d'information sur les luttes environnementales et sociales)
[3] "There were 923 million malnourished people in the world in 2007, an increase of 80 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone - 6 billion people [today more than 6.6 billion] - and could feed the double - 12 billion people" (Wikipedia)
[4] This civil society which gets together every year at the World Social Forum, is already a global historical force. It feeds on battles fought on the most divers fronts against the global dictatorship of the financial capital and its pretense of legitimacy: the neoliberal obscurantism. It has no single program or any permanent institutions. It is the brotherhood of the night.
[5] The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is an intergovernmental organization of states considering themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. The movement is largely the brainchild of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, president of Egypt Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. It was founded in Belgrade (1961); as of 2009, it has 118 members and 17 observer countries. The purpose of the organisation as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics." They represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations's members and 55% of the world population, particularly countries considered to be developing or part of the third world.
" A significant milestone in the development of the Non-aligned movement was the 1955 Bandung Conference, a conference of Asian and African states hosted by Indonesian president Sukarno.
[6] "rà ©surgence mà ©morielle' is the term used consistently by Jean Ziegler actually impossible to translate literally.
[7] Georges Bernanos, a non-conformist Catholic French novelist and political writer (1888 1948), author of "The Diary of a Country Priest" (Le journal d'un curà © de campagne) He started out as a reactionary but during the Spanish war he made a turnaround, supporting the side of the Republicans. During the second World War, he forcefully backed up Charles de Gaulle and the Resistance movement.
[8] La Rà ©publique de Genà ¨ve - 1535-1791
*****
I want to express my
gratitude to the editors of the French information site BASTA! for
providing the text of this important interview, which was done by voice
recognition software. - Siv O'Neall(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
