What do you do when you’re banned from making a speech you were invited to make? Write it down and get someone else to read it. Here’s a sampling of Jaggi Singh’s recent absentee talk in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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I was refused entry into the belly of the beast last night (November 2). A friend and I had to turn back our car into the great white north, but not before we were held, questioned and searched for about ninety minutes at the Vermont border by your ever-vigilant United States Immigration and Customs officials. During those ninety minutes, as about twenty-five or so cars went by, it was only my friend and I, and two other African men after us, who were questioned and held. But far be it for me to suggest that Vermont border guards practice racial profiling.

Getting stopped at the border is not such a big deal, although staring at large, framed colour photos of George Bush Junior and Dick Cheney for over an hour has to qualify as some kind of psychological torture, especially for two anarchists.

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Whether we like it or not, those of us who identify as part of the radical social justice movement have to adjust. I use that word very deliberately, we have to adjust rather than retreat, as a result of the events of September 11 in the United States. It’s the nature of living in an empire — and I use that word very deliberately too — it is in the nature of living in an empire that the emperor decides his priorities, and we have to reckon with those priorities.

Whatever the shallow and simplistic justifications presented — “good versus evil,” “civilization versus terrorism,” “infinite justice,” “enduring freedom” — we are facing and confronting realities that have long existed, but are now more amplified.

Those realities include the drumbeats of war, a war against enemies that are not yet too clear, but war all the same. The enemies are vaguely Arab, brown-skinned and Muslim, but beyond that we’re not too sure. The war on drugs of yesterday is today’s war on terrorism, both equally ill defined and self-serving.

Those realities include racism — not just racist backlash, but racism, — which is an integral part of our so-called Western civilization.

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We’re clearly in an environment of increased and amplified jingoism, chauvinism and nationalism, and this kind of climate lends itself to what I call “cheap shots” and “sloppy thinking.”

There’s one kind of cheap shot that is very predictable, for example the comments of America’s very own Taliban  rightwing preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. They laid the ultimate blame for the September 11 attacks, and America’s so-called weakness, on queers, feminists, atheists and other scapegoats.

Another predictable response is that of other rightwing commentators. We have the religious fundamentalists, but we also have the economic fundamentalists who are making links — perverse links really — between street protests against economic globalization — against the [International Monetary Fund] IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization — and terrorism. These commentators have been expressing the idea that there’s some kind of slippery slope connection between anti-globalization protesters, anarchists and terrorists.

There’s a new kind of McCarthyism that’s being expressed, whereby opposition to capitalism is not only seen as un-American, or un-Canadian — which most of us don’t mind — but it’s even pro-terrorist. That’s the new kind of McCarthyism we’re facing.

The current climate isn’t just McCarthyite, it’s positively Orwellian. When we talk about the “Office of Homeland Security,” it sounds a lot like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. So does the “Patriot Act,” which is being proposed to deal with national security issues in the U.S.A. The offensive attacks on Afghanistan, including Afghani villages and civilians, makes of mockery of the name of the Department of Defense, which is more properly a Department of War and Aggression.

There are other troubling responses that are perhaps just as predictable, but still disturbing; namely, the clear retreat by certain sections of more mainstream social justice movement. A retreat that has shamelessly been presented as some sort of “period of reflection.”

The most obvious example of this retreat was the cancellation of anti-IMF and World Bank protests by Washington’s Mobilization for Global Justice. The decision was not only wrong, it was inexcusable, especially given the clear links between war and globalization that could easily be made to the general public. No less a source than Thomas Friedman — the New York Times columnist and a prominent apologist for capitalist globalization — has written, “The invisible hand of the market needs the invisible fist.”

September 29 in Washington was a singular and unique opportunity to announce to the world, as well as the “homeland,” that there was concerted and public opposition to “America’s New War” in the belly of the beast; not to mention making the seamless link between militarization and globalization (or at least start to make the argument publicly).

Instead, there was a withdrawal from any sort of street presence, although D.C.’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence should be commended for adjusting and publicly expressing opposition to war. Unfortunately, the Mobilization for Global Justice’s retreat did have a tangible effect on the scope and scale of protest.

I don’t want to underestimate the climate that we’re in, but it’s exactly in times like these that we need to be clear, open and assertive about our dissent to the prevailing climate of war hysteria. We can’t simply surrender the public terrain — in the streets, in the media, public terrain broadly defined — to apologists for war, exploitation and national security.

I also don’t want to understate the tragedy in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania. There was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy. But it would trivialize those deaths in New York, and it would trivialize other unnecessary and tragic deaths — such as the children dying in Iraq because of Western-imposed sanctions, or the deaths of Palestinian civilians — it would trivialize all those needless civilian deaths if we didn’t look at the broader context and root-causes of “terrorism” and exploitation and act accordingly. To not do so would be to surrender the terrain, once again, to the flag-wavers and apologists for American hegemony.

Then again, should we really be all that surprised about flag-waving from big labour or mainstream environmental NGOs? After all, they were flag-waving back in Seattle. The Sierra Club’s Seattle slogan at the time was “No globalization without representation,” and mainstream union opposition was anti-Mexico and anti-China.

These critiques of elements of the anti-globalization movement is not intended to be sectarian, but rather to assert the important of a clear, radical opposition to war and its root causes. As well, it exposes some of the weaknesses of the broadly defined “anti-globalization” or “global justice” movement. A movement that, for a lot of people, is about a politics that can be basically defined as “being for good things, and opposed to bad things” — that kind of shallow politics does not easily translate into a principled opposition to war.

Despite the challenges within the “anti-globalization movement,” much of it has clearly moved from an anti-capitalist politics, to an anti-war politics (which obviously, does not forestall an anti-capitalist analysis). But I want to clarify what is meant by “anti-war” or “peace.”

Of course, we’re not just talking about peace in isolation, but a real peace, or peace with justice. But there have been a lot of simplistic citations recently of Gandhi and Lennon — I’m talking about Lennon the Beatle, not Lenin the Bolshevik. Lots of chants like, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

I’m asserting that by talking about being against the war, all we are saying is not simply “give peace a chance.”

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We need to acknowledge that there is a struggle, a fight, against oppression. That struggle has been ongoing, prior to September 11. It’s been ongoing for over 500 years, if not longer. It’s a fight that has been led by movements in the South — movements of the poor, of women, of indigenous people. Their struggle is inextricably linked to ultimate peace.

The status quo of September 10 was not peace, and in any case, there’s no going back there.

The anti-war sentiment is often portrayed as a contrast between hawks who are for war, and doves who are anti-war. That kind of contrast, which arises from simple calls for “giving peace a chance,” is a strategic dead end.

Let me be clear, when it comes to fighting poverty, I’m a hawk. When it comes to confronting oppression and exploitation, I’m a hawk. When it comes to expressing real solidarity with worldwide struggles for self-determination and autonomy, I’m a hawk.

As I said earlier, we are facing realities that are now more amplified than ever. Those realities include the attack on civil liberties, which is really about the criminalization of dissent, as well as a chill effect that goes beyond what is actually written in laws.

Those realities also include the crisis of asylum seekers, which predates the new war and comprises literally millions of people worldwide. Their plight is worsened by the attacks on the rights of immigrants and refugees. A directly related reality to the attacks on immigrants and refugees worldwide is racism. And I assert that racism is much much more than some people with pointy hats and hoods, or about people urging everyone to “tolerate” other cultures.

Related inextricably to racism is that much-avoided word called imperialism. We’ve celebrated the move by elements of the anti-globalization movement to a clear anti-capitalist position. Well, a similar move to anti-imperialism is demanded by the current crisis.

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By talking about American crimes and American-sponsored terror, in Chile or Nicaragua or Iran or Indonesia, I’m not excusing the attacks on September 11, 2001. Rather, I’m trying to expose the astounding hypocrisy for the United States to speak of a “war on terrorism” when their own state terror, direct and indirect, is so overwhelming.

Colin Powell, after the bombs began dropping on Kandahar and Kabul, spoke out against so-called rogue states and warned: “You cannot separate your activities from the activities of the perpetrators.” By that logic — considering U.S. sponsorship of death squads, massacres and torture in Latin America — we’d we bombing Fort Benning, Georgia or the Southern Command in Miami.

In his speech to a joint session of Congress, George Bush stated, “Any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” I guess Bush is having feelings of extreme self-loathing and paranoia.