Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014) ("The [Indian] army is experienced enough to know that coercive force alone cannot carry out or manage social engineering on the scale that is envisaged by India's planners. War against the poor is one thing. But for the rest of us--the middle class, white-collar workers, intellectuals, 'opinion-makers'--it has to be 'perception management.' And for this we must turn out attention to the exquisite art of Corporate Philanthropy." Id. at 17. "Poverty, too, like feminism, is often framed as an identity problem. As though the poor had not been created by injustice but are a lost tribe who just happen to exist and can be rescued in the short term by a system of grievance redressal (administer by NGOs on an individual, person-to-person basis), and whose long-term resurrection will come from Good Governance. Under the regime of Global Corporate Capitalism, it goes without saying." Id. at 37. "Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create a market for weapons? After all, the economies of Europe, the United States, and Israel depend hugely on their weapons industry. It's the one thing they haven't outsourced to China." Id. at 43. "Capitalism is in crisis. Trickledown failed. Now Gush-Up is in trouble too. The international financial meltdown is closing in. [] Major international corporations are sitting on huge piles of money, not sure where to invest it, nor sure how the financial crisis wildly out. There is a major, structural crack in the juggernaut of global capital." Id. at 45.).
Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (New York: The Modern Library, 1999).
Arundhati Roy, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009) ("Fascism's firm footprint has appeared in India. Let's mark the date: Spring 2002. While we think the U.S. president and the Coalition Against Terror for creating a congenial international atmosphere for fascism's ghastly debut, we can't credit them for the years it has been brewing in our public and private lives." Id. at 42. "The incident, creeping fascism of the past few years has been grounded by many of our 'democratic' institutions. Everyone has flirted with it--Parliament, the press, the police, the administration, the public. Even 'secularists' have been guilty of helping to create the right climate. Each time you defend the right of an institution, any institution (including the Supreme Court), to exercise unfettered, unaccountable powers that must never be challenged, you move toward fascism." Id. at 43.).
Arundhati Roy, The Greater Common Good (Bombay: IndiaBook Distributors, 1999) ("'If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country...' (Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud dam, 1948.) I stood on a hill and laughed out loud." Id. at 1. "From being self-sufficient and free, to being impoverished and yoked to the whims of a world you know nothing, nothing about--what d'you suppose it must feel like? Would you like to trade your beach house in Goa for a hovel in Paharganj? No? Not even for the sake of the Nation?" Id. at 39. "Power s fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And Powerlessness, reaffirmed not just by the helpless of those who have lost, but also by gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained." Id. at 61.).
Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire (New York: Open Media Pamphlet Series/Seven Stories Press, 2004) ("In the United States . . . the blurring of the distinction between sarkar and public [that is, between the government and the people] has penetrated far deeper into society. This could be a sign of a robust democracy, but unfortunately, it's a little more complicated and less pretty than that. Among other things, it has to do with the elaborate web of paranoia generated by the U.S. searcher and spun out by the corporate media and Hollywood. Ordinary people in the United States have been manipulated into imaging they are a people unde siege whose sole refuge and protector is their government [and their guns?]. If it isn't the Communists, it's al-Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba, it's Nicaragua. [If it is blacks, it's illegal immigrants?] As a result, this, the most powerful nation in the world--with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars, and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs--is peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear." Id. at 7-8. "If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terrorism and the logic that underlies terrorism are exactly the same. Both make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. Al-Qaeda made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the actions of their government in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The U. S. government has made the people of Afghanistan pay in the thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people of Iraq pay in the hundreds of thousands for the actions of Saddam Hussein." Id. at 11. "A second hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-ization of resistance. [] NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the searcher and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators the interpreters the facilitators of the discourse, They play out the role of the 'reasonable man' in an unfair , unreasonable war." Id. at 41-43. "The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in." "Real resistance has real consequences, And no salary." Id. at 46.).
AS AMERICANS, WE NEED TO WAKE UP TO WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING IN THE GLOBAL WORLD . . . AND THE MANY THINGS FOR WHICH WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE RESPONSIBLE.
