Terrorism As Cannibalism

Year 2001 will be etched in our memory as a year in which the vicious cycleof violence was unleashed worldwide. Of the Taliban bombing the two thousandyear old images of peace, the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Of terrorists blowing up the W.T.C. on September 11, and attempting to blowup the Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir on October 1, and the Indian Parliament onDecember 13. Of a global alliance bombing out what remained of Afghanistan aftertwo decades of super power rivalry, and civil war. Of Pakistan and Indiathreatening to go to war as 2001 gave way to 2002.

Why is violence engulfing us so rapidly, so totally? Why has violence becomethe dominant feature of the human species across cultures. Could the violencecharacterising human societies in the new millenium be linked with violentstructures and institutions we have created to reduce society to markets andhumans to consumers?

Animals of any species tend to become violent when they are treated withviolent methods.

Pigs love to root in the fields, wallow in the mud, grunt to each other.However when denied this freedom in factory farms where they are confined inover crowded, steel barred crates or multiple stacked cages known as batterycages, pigs become bored, stressed and anxious. They start knawing cages,picking on each other, biting each other’s tails and ears and resorting towhat agribusiness industry has called "cannibalism". (Ref. Michael Fox, OldMacDonalds Factory Farm)

Pigs are not cannibals. When they start to display cannibalism, the normalquestion industry should be asking is why are pigs behaving abnormally. Theorganic movement and animal liberation movement has raised the question andfound the answer in the violent methods of factory farming. In humane farmingpigs have been liberated and allowed to roam and roll in the mud. Stoppingviolence against animals is the best way to stop their violent behavior.

Industry has a different solution to "cannibalism" induced by theconcentration camp conditions of factory farms. Operators of pig factories chopoff the tails of week old piglets without any anaesthics to prevent other pigsfrom chewing them off. They also remove eight teeth with wire cutters. Malepiglets have their testicles cut off to reduce their aggression in crowdedareas.

While removing tails and teeth is the solution offered to violent behavior inpigs, chicken in factory farms are debeaked, and cattle are dehorned.

Beaks are the most important feature of chicken. When roaming in the open, achicken needs its beak for eating, pecking, preening, cleaning, grooming. Whenconfined in battery cages, chicken start to attack each other with their beaks.According to industry, chicken are debeaked to protect them from one another. Aday old chick’s beak is pressed against a red hot metal blade at 800oC. Oftenit injures the tongue.

Chicken injured during debeaking die of starvation. What industry is blind tois that it is not chickens beak that is the cause of violent, abnormal andcannibalistic behavior among chicken, but the overcrowded, unnatural conditionsof their living in cages. Free-range chicken do not kill each other with theirbeaks. They find worms and food for their own nourishment.

The horns of the cow are its most distinctive feature. We adorn them withbells and decorations. At Muttu Pongal, the horns of cattle are decorated withflowers and balloons. In organic agriculture cow horns are used to increase thepotency of compost. But in factory farming, cattle are dehorned because theyattack each other under conditions of confinement.

The problem, clearly, is the factory cage – not the teeth and tails ofpigs, the beaks of chicken, the horns of cattle. It is the cage that needsremoving, not the tail, or beak or horn. When animals are denied their basicfreedoms to function as a species, when they are held captive and confined, theyturn to "cannibalism".

Humans are animals. As a species we too have basic needs – for meaning andidentity, for community and security, for food and water, for freedom.

Could terrorism be the human equivalent of the abnormal behavior of"cannibalism" in animals exhibit under factory conditions?

Humans are of course, not being confined to iron cages (though in the U.S, inAustralia, a large percentage of blacks and aborigines are behind bars). Humansociety is being caged and controlled through complex laws and policies, throughviolent economic and political structures which are enclosing of their spaces --spiritual, ecological, political and economic.

Humans are experiencing their religious spaces enclosed when militariesoccupy sacred lands as in the Mid East. Humans are experiencing enclosurethrough occupation as in Palestine. The children in affluent America are alsoexperiencing a closing of their lives, and are turning to mindless violence asin the case of shooting at St. Columbines. And across the world, ecological,economic and political spaces are being enclosed through privatisation,liberalisation and globalisation.

These multiple processes are breeding new insecurities, new anxieties, newstresses. Cultural security, economic security, ecological security, politicalsecurity are all being rapidly eroded.

Could the violence being unleashed by humans against humans be similar to theviolence pigs, chicken and cattle express when denied their freedom to roll inthe mud, peck for worms, and roam outside the confines of animal factories?

Could the coercive imposition of a consumer culture worldwide, with itsconcomitant destruction of values, cultural diversity, livelihoods, and theenvironment be the invisible cages against which people are rebelling, someviolently, most non-violently.

Could the "war against terrorism" be equivalent to the detoothing,debeaking, dehorning of pigs chickens and cattle by agribusiness industrybecause they are turning violent when kept under violent conditions? Could thelasting solution to violence induced by the violence of captivity andenslavement for humans be the same as that for other animals – giving themback their space for spiritual freedom, ecological freedom, for psychologicalfreedom and for economic freedom.

The cages that humans are feeling tapped in are the new enclosures which arerobbing communities of their cultural spaces and identities, and theirecological and economic spaces for survival. Globalisation is the overachingname for this enclosure.

Greed and appropriation of other people’s share of the plane’s preciousresources are at the root of conflicts, and the root of terrorism. WhenPresident Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the goal of theglobal war on terrorism is for the defense of he American and European "way oflife", they are declaring a war against the planet-its oil, its water, itsbiodiversity.

A way of life for the 20 percent of the earth’s people who use 80 percentof the planet’s resources will dispossess 80 percent of its people of theirjus share of resources and eventually destroy the planet. We cannot survive as aspecies if greed is privileged and protected and he economics of the greedy setthe rules for how we live and die.

If the past enclosures have already precipitated so much violence, what willbe the human costs of new enclosures being carved out for privatisation ofliving resources and water resources, the very basis of our species survival.Intellectual property laws and water privatisation are new invisible cagestrapping humanity.

IPR laws are denying farmers the basic freedom of saving and exchanging seed.They are, in effect, enclosing the genetic commons, creating new scarcities in abiologically rich world, transforming fundamental freedoms into criminal actspunishable with fines and jail sentences.

Water privatisation policies are enclosing the water commons, transformingwater into a commodity to be bought and sold for profit, creating water scarcityin a water abundant world.

Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer had been using his own seeds for the pastfifty years. His Canola seed was genetically polluted with Monsanto’s GMCanola through wind and pollination. Instead of Percy being paid compensation inaccordance with the polluter pay principle, the courts fined Percy on the basisof Monsanto’s IPR case which argued that since the genes were Monsanto’sproperty their being found in Percy’s field made him a thief irrespective ofhow they came to be there.

The violator becomes the violated, the violated becomes the violator in theperverse world of patents on genes, seeds and living material. Such perverselaws are transforming agriculture into police states and farmers into criminals.They are the invisible cages which are holding humans captive to marketprocesses and corporate rule.

The Privatisation of water is another threat to human freedom.

Perhaps the most famous tale of corporate greed over water is the story ofCochabamba, Bolivia. In this semi-desert region, water is scarce and precious.In 1999, the World bank recommended privatization of Cochabamba’s municipalwater supply company (SEMAPA) through a concession to International Water, asubsidiary of Bechtel. On October 1999, the Drinking Water and Sanitation Lawwas passed, ending government subsidies and allowing privatization.

In a city where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month, water billsreached $20 a month, nearly the cost of feeding a family of five for two weeks.In January 2000, a citizens’ alliance called La Coodination de efensa del Aguay de la Vida (The Coalition in Defence of Water and Life) was formed.

The alliance shut down the city for four days through mass mobilization.Within a month, millions of Bolivians marched to Cochabamba, held a generalstrike, and stopped all transportation. At the gathering, the protesters issuedthe Cochabamba Declaration, calling for the protection of universal waterrights.

The government promised to reverse the price hike but never did. In February2000, La Coordinadora organized a peaceful march demanding the repeal of theDrinking Water and Sanitation Law, the annulment of ordinances allowingprivatization, the termination of the water contract, and the participation ofcitizens in drafting a water resource law.

The citizen’s demands, which drove a stake through the heart of corporateinterests, were violently rejected. Coordinadora’s fundamental critique wasdirected at the negation of water as a community property. Protesters usedslogans like `Water is God’s Gift and Not A Merchandise’ and `Water isLife’.

In April 2000, the government tried to silence the water protests throughmarket law. Activists were arrested, protesters killed, and the media censored.Finally on April 10, 2000, the people won. Aguas del Tunari and Bechtel leftBolivia and the government was forced to revoke its hated water privatizationlegislation.

The water company Servicio Municipal del Agua Potable Alcantarillado (SEMAPA)and its debts were handed over to the workers and the people. In the summer of2000, La Coordinadora organized public hearings to establish democratic planningand management. The people have taken on the challenge to establish a waterdemocracy, but the water dictators are trying their best to subvert the process.Bechtel is suing Bolivia, and the Bolivian government is harassing andthreatening activists of La Coordinadora.

By reclaiming water from corporations and the market, the citizens of Boliviahave illustrated that privatization is not inevitable and that corporatetakeover o vital resources can be prevented by people’s democratic will.

The resource hunger of a corporate driven consumer culture is attempting toenslave own and control every plant, every seed, every drop of water.

The suicides of farmers are one aspect of violence engendered by a violentworld order based on markets, profits, consumerism. Suicide bombers are anotheraspect. One is directed towards the `self’. The other is directed towards the`other’. And in a fragmenting and disintegrating world, where everyone feelscaged, everyone has potential to become the dangerous ‘other’. Like animalsin factory cages, we are attacking ourselves or each other.

Animals have the animal liberation movement to speak for them and set themfree when the industry which has held them captive under violent conditionsperpetrates further violence to deal with the cannibalism that captivity iscausing.

What is needed is an animal liberation movement for humans – a movementsensitive to the captivity of consumer culture and global markets, a movementcompassionate enough to sense the deep violations humanity is experiencing, amovement that recognises that it is not the teeth of pigs, beaks of birds, hornsof cows that need to be removed, but the cages.

The multicoloured, diversity based movement against the structural violenceof global markets and the consumer culture has elements that could grow toliberate the human spirit from the degradations and deprivations of corporateglobalisation. Reclaiming our freedoms and spaces from the new enclosures is asessential to us as it is to other animals.

Animals were not designed to live imprisoned in cages. Humans were notdesigned to live imprisoned in markets, or live wasted and disposable if theycannot be consumers in the global market.

Our deepening dehumanisation is at the roots of growing violence. Reclaimingour humanity in inclusive, compassionate way is the first step to peace.

Peace will not be created through weapons and wars, bombs and barbarism.Violence will not be contained by spreading it. Violence has become a luxury thehuman species cannot afford if we are to survive. Non-violence has become asurvival imperative.

(by arrangement with Znet)