Ziegler's Empire of Shame
Empire of Shame
March 27, 2005
http://www.jp-petit.com/VIDEOS/L_Empire_de_la_Honte_Jean_Zigler.wmv
Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur (with 60,000 civilian staff) responsible for issues relating to food resources, has just published a book with Fayard Publishers, translated into 14 languages, titled:
Empire of Shame. Fayard Publishers
In an 11 MB video available below, corresponding to his recent interview on TV5, he presents his work. He explains why, at the time of the French Revolution, the idea of providing enough food for every human being on Earth to survive was still a utopia, a dream, but that today it would be technically possible. However, this is made impossible by the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, whom he calls the warlords of economic warfare. They impose a feudal order whose armed arm is none other than American military power, which now operates without UN approval and without any oversight. The United States now uses torture and assassination as a "necessary evil" and has withdrawn from the Geneva Convention. The author predicts that the appointment of Wolfowitz to head the World Bank is once again a disaster, as the institution, instead of striving for justice, will now serve the most powerful.
Ziegler recalls that Bush signed a decree authorizing American armed commandos to operate outside the United States while physically eliminating individuals who are not guilty, but merely suspected. He speaks of a "new cruelty" and an "organization of hunger" in the service of a "new world order," which is murderous and absurd. Ziegler calls for a "moral insurrection."
The man's tone is impressive. The interview, broadcast on a Canadian television channel (TV5), was a major media success. Something unthinkable in France, where these slots are occupied by trivialities and spectacles of crushed dogs.
Listen to what this man says, read his book, spread his message: your future as a human being is at stake:
The full interview
Jean Ziegler
: "We are heading towards a new feudalization of the world"
In his new essay, Empire of Shame (Fayard), published on March 10, the subversive Genevan sociologist and intellectual – today the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food at the Commission on Human Rights – attacks "private transnational corporations." Accused of maintaining famine, destroying nature, and subverting democracy, they extend their influence across the world and seek to erase the achievements of the Enlightenment. To resist them, we must reclaim the spirit of the French Revolution and hold our heads high, as Brazilian President Lula da Silva is already doing.
Your book is titled Empire of Shame. What is this empire? Why "shame"? What is this shame?
Jean Ziegler
: In the favelas of northern Brazil, some mothers can, in the evening, put water in a pot and place stones inside. To their children crying with hunger, they explain that "the meal will be ready soon…," hoping that in the meantime the children will fall asleep.
Can one measure the shame felt by a mother facing her children tormented by hunger, whom she is unable to feed?
Yet the murderous world order – which kills 100,000 people every day from hunger and epidemics – causes shame not only in its victims but also in us, Westerners, Whites, leaders, who are complicit in this hegemony, conscious, informed, and yet silent, cowardly, and paralyzed.
Empire of Shame? It could be this widespread influence of the feeling of shame caused by the inhumanity of the world order. Indeed, it refers to the empire of private transnational corporations, led by cosmocrats. The 500 most powerful of them controlled 52% of the gross world product last year, that is, all the wealth produced on the planet.
In your book, you speak of "structural violence." What does this expression mean?
Jean Ziegler
: In the empire of shame, controlled by organized scarcity, war is no longer sporadic; it is permanent. It is no longer a crisis, a pathology, but normality. It is no longer the eclipse of reason – as Horkheimer said – but the very justification of the empire. The warlords of economic warfare subject the planet to a rigorously organized control. They attack the normative power of states, challenge popular sovereignty, subvert democracy, ravage nature, and destroy human beings and their freedoms. The liberalization of the economy, the "invisible hand" of the market, constitute their cosmogony; the maximization of profit, their practice. I call this practice and this cosmogony "structural violence."
Thus, you also speak of an "agonizing of law." What does this expression mean?
Jean Ziegler
: Henceforth, endless preventive war, the permanent aggressiveness of the lords, arbitrariness, and structural violence reign unimpeded. The majority of the barriers of international law are collapsing. The UN itself is devoid of any force. Cosmocrats are above all law. My book recounts the collapse of international law, citing numerous examples drawn directly from my experience as Special Rapporteur at the United Nations on the right to food.
You describe famine as a "weapon of mass destruction." What solutions do you propose?
Jean Ziegler
: Along with debt, hunger is the weapon of mass destruction used by cosmocrats to crush – and exploit – populations, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. A complex set of measures, immediately feasible and described in the book, could quickly put an end to hunger. It is impossible to summarize them in a single sentence. One thing is certain: global agriculture, in its current state of productivity, could feed twice the current human population. There is therefore no fatality: hunger is man-made.
Some countries are crushed, you say, by an "odious debt." What does "odious debt" mean and what solutions do you propose?
Jean Ziegler
: Rwanda is a small agricultural republic of 26,000 km², located on the ridge of Central Africa that separates the waters of the Nile and the Congo, and cultivating tea and coffee. From April to June 1994, a genocidal horror, organized by the Hutu government allied with François Mitterrand's France, caused the death of more than 800,000 Tutsis, men, women, and children. The machetes used for the genocide were imported from China and Egypt and financed primarily by Crédit Lyonnais. Today, the survivors, very poor peasants, must repay banks and creditor states even the credits used to purchase the genocidaires' machetes. Here is an example of odious debt. The solution lies in immediate and unconditional cancellation, or, at the very least, in an audit of this debt, as recommended by the International Socialist Party, or as President Lula did in Brazil, in order to renegotiate it item by item. In each item, there are indeed criminal elements – corruption, overbilling, etc. – that must be reduced. International audit firms, such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers or Ernst & Young, can absolutely conduct such audits, as they assume responsibility each year for auditing the accounts of multinationals.
You cite President Lula da Silva several times as a model. What inspires this consideration for his actions?
Jean Ziegler
: I feel both admiration and concern regarding President Lula's political objectives and actions: admiration, because he is the first president of Brazil to accept recognizing that his country has 44 million citizens seriously and durably undernourished, and to want to end this inhuman situation; concern, too, because, with an external debt of $235 billion, Lula does not have the means to end this situation.
In your book, you also mention a "new feudalization of the world." What does this expression mean?
Jean Ziegler
: On August 4, 1789, the deputies of the French National Assembly abolished feudalism. Their action had a universal repercussion. Yet today, we are witnessing a formidable regression. September 11, 2001, did not only give George W. Bush the opportunity to extend the influence of the United States over the world, but also justified the implementation of a rigorously organized control of the populations of the Global South by large private transnational corporations.
In your book, you frequently refer to the French Revolution and some of its protagonists (Danton, Babeuf, Marat…): why do you believe it still has something to offer, two centuries later, in a world that is nonetheless very different?
Jean Ziegler
: Read the texts! The Proclamation of the Enragés by Jacques Roux sets the horizon for any struggle for global social justice. The founding values of the Republic, indeed of civilization itself, date from the Enlightenment. Yet the empire of shame destroys even the hope of realizing these values.
In your book, you criticize the "total war on terrorism" for diverting resources needed for other more important struggles, such as the fight against hunger. Do you think terrorism is a false threat, maintained by certain states? If so, what makes you think so? Do you think this threat is not real or that it deserves a different treatment?
Jean Ziegler
: The state terrorism of Bush, Sharon, Putin… is as hateful as the Islamic jihad practiced by very small groups or other mad, bloodthirsty men of this kind. They are the two sides of the same cruelty. Both are entirely real, since Bush kills and Bin Laden kills. The problem of eradicating terrorism can only be solved by a total upheaval of the empire of shame. Only global social justice will be able to cut the jihadists off from their roots and deprive the lackeys of the cosmocrats of the pretexts for their responses.
In 2002, you were appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. What reflections did you draw from this?
Jean Ziegler
: My mandate is fascinating: in total independence – accountable to the UN General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights – I must make justiciable, through a statutory or conventional duty, a new human right: the right to food. It is a Sisyphean task! It progresses millimeter by millimeter. The essential arena of this struggle is the collective conscience. For a long time, the destruction of human beings by hunger was tolerated in a kind of cold normality. Today, it is deemed intolerable. Public opinion exerts pressure on governments and international organizations (WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc.) so that fundamental measures are taken to eradicate the enemy: agrarian reform in the Third World, fair prices for Southern agricultural products, rationalization of humanitarian aid in the event of sudden disasters, closure of the Chicago Stock Exchange for agricultural commodities, which speculate on staple foods, fight against the privatization of drinking water, etc.
In your book, you appear as a defender of the "alter-globalization" cause, even as a spokesperson for this movement. How is it that you rarely participate in "alter" demonstrations and that you are generally not considered an "alter" intellectual?
Jean Ziegler
: How so? I spoke before 20,000 people at the "Gigantino" in Porto Alegre in January 2003. I feel like an organic intellectual of the new global civil society, of its multiple faces of resistance, this tremendous fraternity of the night. But I remain faithful to the principles of revolutionary class analysis, in Jacques Roux, Babeuf, Marat, and Saint-Just.
You seem to attribute all the world's misfortunes to multinationals and a core of states (the United States, Russia, Israel…): isn't this a bit of a reduction?
Jean Ziegler
: The current world order is not only murderous; it is also absurd. It kills, destroys, massacres, but does so without any need other than the pursuit of maximum profit for a few cosmocrats driven by an obsession for power, an unlimited greed.
Bush, Sharon, Putin? Lackeys, auxiliaries. I add a postscript on Israel: Sharon is not Israel. He is its perversion. Michael Warschawski, B'Tselem, the "Rabbis for Human Rights," and many other resistance organizations embody the true Israel, the future of Israel. They deserve our total solidarity.
Do you think morality has a place in international relations, which are rather dictated by economic and geopolitical interests?
Jean Ziegler
: There is no choice. Either you choose development and normative organization, or you choose the invisible hand of the market, the violence of the strongest, and arbitrariness. Feudal power and social justice are radically paradoxical.
"Forward to our roots," demands the German Marxist Ernst Bloch. If we do not urgently restore the values of the Enlightenment, the Republic, international law, civilization as we have built it for two hundred and fifty years in Europe will be submerged, absorbed by the jungle.
Since the departure of the Taliban, the Middle East and the Arab-Muslim world seem to be traversed by a wave of more or less spontaneous democratization (elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, opening of the presidential election to other candidates in Egypt…). How do you judge this and do you think democracy can be exported to these countries? Or do you believe they are condemned to have despotic systems?
Jean Ziegler
: It is not a question of "exporting democracy." The desire for autonomy, democracy, and popular sovereignty is consubstantial with the human being, regardless of the corner of the world where he was born. My friend, the great Syrian sociologist Bassam Tibi, wants a democratic existence and has every right to it. Yet, for thirty years, he has lived in Germany, exiled from the terrible dictatorship reigning in his country. Elias Sanbar, the Palestinian writer, another of my friends, has a right to a free and democratic Palestine, not to an occupied Palestine, nor to a life under the harsh rule of obscurantist Islamists. Tibi, Sanbar, and I want the same thing and have the same right: democracy. The problem: the Cold War, the instrumentalization of existing regimes by the great powers, and finally the cowardice of Western democrats, their lack of active and real solidarity, have allowed the tyrants of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, the Gulf, and Iran to endure until today.
Gian Paolo Accardo
Source: La Libre Belgique:
"Empire of Shame," according to Ziegler
OLIVIER SHEEP
UN Special Rapporteur, the Swiss publishes a new savage indictment against globalization.
The United Nations, he says, are in danger of disappearing.
Alexis Haulot
INTERVIEW
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, the Swiss Jean Ziegler publishes a new indictment against globalization, Empire of Shame (1).
Your experience at the United Nations has left its mark on this book...
Completely. I have an observatory like never before. And I am very worried. The United Nations is sixty years old this year and is threatened with disappearance. By its bureaucracy, on the one hand, with its 62,000 civilian staff. By its incompetence in the face of certain major crises, on the other: Srebrenica, the Rwandan genocide, all of this is unforgivable. Its charter contains the essential elements of civilization: collective security, global social justice, and human rights. Yet, these three pillars are attacked by the unilateralism of the current American system, which denies collective security in Iraq, appoints Wolfowitz to the World Bank, and denounces the Convention against Torture that the Americans had nonetheless signed. Since Bush's first term, a unit has been installed in the basement of the White House to monitor all senior UN officials. Those who have a conflicting interest with the immediate interests of the United States are fought. At this rate, the United Nations risk disappearing...
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has just presented a reform of the UN. Do you think this is a way to save it?
His proposals are courageous. Kofi Annan is a very, very respected person. He is attacked from all sides through smear campaigns, attempts are made to destroy him psychologically, but he wants to go to the end of his mandate and conclude the Millennium Development Goals. This goes against American imperialist interests and private capital. When one proposes to halve extreme poverty – two billion people live on less than a dollar a day – this implies land reforms, control of multinational profits, reduction in drug prices, food sovereignty...
Your book is a plea for debt cancellation.
Yes, everything