The permanent Western duplicity Ziegler

"The slave owners are sitting in the stock market"

Eren Güvercin 21/10/2009

Jean Ziegler, on his book "The hatred of the West"

The Swiss sociologist and politician Jean Ziegler, critics of globalization is considered. For decades, he fights against hunger and poverty and the capitalist responsible for these conditions. He was for many years MP for the Socialist Party in the National Assembly. 2000-2008 he was UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In 2008 he was elected to the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council.

Mr. Ziegler just your book "The hatred of the West" is now out. Why the West is hated? The time of colonialism's already long gone ...

Jean Ziegler: The title of my book "The hatred of the West" can shock. It's in my book about two types of hatred. The hatred of the Southern Hemisphere, where to live after all, 4.5 billion of 6.7 billion people, has two very different faces. There is a pathological hatred. This is Al-Qaeda terrorism, which is organized crime. And there's a reason-hatred, the desire to revolt against the cannibal, from the west on the planet, built world order. In Bolivia, for example, is 3 years for the first time in 500 years, an Indian democratically elected president. An incredible Identity movement is under way, a democratic opposition movement, which arises from the five major Indian nations of the Andean highlands. Evo Morales is due to take over this resistance movement to power, over 200 foreign companies and to dictate entirely new conditions. Suddenly, this poverty-stricken Bolivian government has to keep the money, his people from misery and hunger. That is the reason-hatred.

The permanent Western duplicity

Where does this hatred?

Jean Ziegler: He has two sources. The first source is the wounded consciousness. It's like the Holocaust, we do not know why a wounded consciousness, a terrible crime, two takes, three generations, until it comes to awareness. The same is now experiencing the peoples of the South. Slavery and the colonial massacres are two terrible wounds that continue to live in the memory. Only today, generations after the massacre, this wounded memory to political consciousness.

I want to tell you an anecdote to illustrate this. In December 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the first time in Algiers to negotiate oil contracts. The French delegation sits down at the table in the presidential palace in Algiers. Before the negotiations begin, is on President Bouteflika and says: "First, I want an apology for Sétif!" Setif is the terrible massacre that the Foreign Legion 8th Guilty in May 1945 on the Algerian civil population. It has cost over 42,000 dead and wounded. Quite upset Sarkozy replied: "I am not come because of nostalgia." The response from Bouteflika: "The memorial in front of stores! Subsequently, there were no negotiations. The last state visit, which should make Bouteflika in Paris, was last July. Which was canceled because the excuse for Setif is still not yet arrived.
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The second source of reason-hatred is the permanent western double standards when it comes to democracy, human rights and rule of law. I am Vice Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council of the UN Human Rights Council. I experience at every meeting of the Human Rights Council this western hypocrisy. Even President Obama tortured further. At Bagram weitergefoltert. He gets the Nobel Prize, as he leads two wars. The duplicity of the West will no longer stand by the peoples of the South.

I would also like to give here an example. In my book, Nigeria plays a major role, the most populous country in Africa and one of the largest oil exporters in the world. Since 1966, Nigeria was ruled by changing military dictatorships, under democratic mask, and the country is being plundered by oil companies. The population here suffers from hunger, contaminated water and illiteracy. In April 2007 there were again called elections held in Nigeria. The European Union was chaired by Mrs Merkel. Mrs Merkel has ordered the election. The EU can not very well. She has observed the electoral process and the conclusion was absolutely devastating. It was a total fraud. There were even killed opposition politicians. The new Nigerian President Amaru has no democratic legitimacy. Two months later, will be held in Heiligendamm, the G8 summit. Mrs Merkel invited as guest of honor from Africa Amaru, the electoral fraud. Mrs Merkel is trapped in ethnocentrism among Europeans. She does not see the deep wound insult they doing to the Nigerian people when they invite the man whom she has two months before election exposed as fraudsters, now the guest of honor at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. This blindness of the West is intolerable to the south.

The financial dictatorship is seen as the final stage of exploitation and oppression of the Western strategy

What are the reasons for the schizophrenic attitude of the West?

Jean Ziegler: The West, with 12.8 percent of the world's population is a minority that ruled over the planet for over five hundred years. End of 15th Century, when the earth is round, after the fourth voyage of Columbus, is the genocide in Latin America. Then there was the slave trade 350 years, then 150 years of colonial massacres and Territorialbesetzung. Today, there is the tyranny of global finance capital.

Last year, dominated the five hundred largest private companies in the world according to World Bank statistics, together more than 52 percent of world product. This financial capital in the hands of some Western oligarchs has a power that never before in human history, a king, an emperor or a pope has had. These financial dictatorship of the southern nations as the last stage of exploitation and oppression seen Western strategy. The slaveholders are sitting in the exchanges that determine commodity prices and speculation - though not visible to the public - responsible for hundreds of thousands of hungry people. Hunger every five seconds a child under 10 years. This year in April for the first time has exceeded the number of undernourished people constantly the one billion mark. And on a planet teeming with wealth.

There is today no longer destiny. A child who is now as we speak, is dying of hunger, is murdered. This world order, which the West is imposing on the planet, creates his own theory. The West believes in the universality of his own ethnocentric values. I have just come from the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Each Western ambassadors, so clever, so subtle, and he cultivated when he speaks, speaks in the name of humanity, universal values, and gives his teachings to the peoples of Latin America, Asia and Africa. This is almost konsubstanziell the Western discourse, and comes out of this total blindness, because the material oppression, which is produced by the West, including her own legitimacy discourse produced. And today this is no longer tolerated.

If the history of the world assume more and more from the south? Is not that too utopian?

Jean Ziegler: That may dictate the Euro-Atlantic world, since they the few corrupt oligarchies the periphery of China and India have integrated into their commercial exploitation, plunder, commodity prices and still had a massive south. The Democratic Republic of Congo, this sub-continent, where people are dying by the thousands every day from hunger, is a geological wonder. As are incredibly rich. The looting goes on, however, because the corporations have been able to use in many countries, corrupt rulers who sign up this exploitation contracts. The real story, the story of the mobilization of resistance, where life is produced and solidarity to political power, is happening today in the south. What today is created in the Andean highlands to mobilize what is emerging in Venezuela or Ecuador, which is radically new. Even in Africa, these forces are emerging. Marx said, the revolutionary must be able to hear the grass grow too. And this grass grows everywhere on the periphery of the western world financial dictatorship.

The revolt of conscience will come

You talk in your book, much of the changes in Bolivia and Evo Morales. Are these real alternatives to the developments in South America - as you call it - "predatory capitalism"? Many criticize the developments in Bolivia as totalitarian ...

Jean Ziegler: You can have any political prejudice. We can be left to be right. We live in free societies in Western Europe. But the ignorance and arrogant condemnation of the revolutionary movements on the periphery are unworthy. The creative, community-and solidaritätsschaffende story applies to the Andes, in the 12 000 Indian tribes that make up Bolivia, instead. In many parts of South America's history is created, and we should learn from them.

But in Europe, something happens. I no longer believe in the European nation whose sovereign rights are now overdetermined by capitalist commodity rationality. The EU is nothing more than a corporate board of directors. Since no values, no ambitions remain. But there are civil society, this wonderful fraternity. I'll be back at Heiligendamm in summer 2007. I was the barbed wire on the other side. Since we were 140,000 people from 41 nations of all political persuasions. There were pastors there, Trotskyists, young and old. All have been there and discussed. They were all driven by the moral imperative, not by the political imperative, or any party ideologies.

Immanuel Kant said: "The inhumanity that is being done to another, destroys the humanity in me." This moral imperative is the engine of a new civil society that will no longer tolerate a world where every five seconds a child dies of hunger. This civil society is very strong in Germany, the World Hunger Relief through Geenpeace to attac. The revolt of conscience will come. Germany is the most vibrant democracy in Europe. There is no weakness in a democracy. The fundamental rights exist, and that may be needed to force our government to waive the dumping of EU agriculture in Africa to break the bondage of third countries, rather than promote the interests of creditors Deutsche Bank and other major banks forever. I am quite confident that close to this uprising of conscience at our imminent.

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Jean Ziegler: The hatred of the West

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