Democracy and Oil

Arundhati Roy: The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney. Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me! However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well. When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch rema...

Beastly Behavior

By Chris Floyd It was a largely secret operation, its true intentions masked by pious rhetoric and bogus warnings of imminent danger to the American way of life. Having gained the dazed complicity of a somnolent Congress, U.S. President George W. Bush calmly signed a death warrant for thousands upon thousands of innocent victims: a native population whose land and resources were coveted by a small group of powerful elites seeking to augment their already vast dominance by any means necessary, including mass slaughter. A flashback to March 2003, when Bush finally brought his long-simmering brew of aggressive war to the boil? Not at all -- it happened just last week. This time, however, the victims were not the Iraqi people, but one of the last remaining symbols of pure freedom left in America itself: the nation's herd of wild horses, galloping unbridled on the people's common lands. With an obscure provision smuggled without any hearings or public notice into the ...

"Global Doubts as Global Solutions"

by Amartya Sen Melbourne Town Hall Tuesday, May 15, 2001, 6pm 1. Misery and Resignation We live in a world of unprecedented prosperity - incomparably richer than ever before. The massive command over resources, knowledge and technology that we now take for granted would be hard for our ancestors to imagine. But ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality. An astonishing number of children are ill nourished and illiterate as well as ill cared and needlessly ill. Millions perish every week from diseases that can be completely eliminated, or at least prevented from killing people with abandon. The world in which we live is both remarkably comfortable and thoroughly miserable. Faced with this dual recognition, we can go in one of several different directions. One line of thinking takes the form of arguing that the combination of processes that has led to the prosperity of some will lead to similar prosperity for all. The advocacy of this perspective c...

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