As the eminent Arnold Toynbee pointed out, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”. Here, Arundhati Roy carries her Far-Left Post-Modernism to its logical suicidal ends –
…the longer you stay [in places like Iraq], the more you’re enforcing these tribal differences and creating a resistance, which obviously, on the one hand, someone like me does support; on the other hand, you support the resistance, but you may not support the vision that they are fighting for. And I keep saying, you know, I’m doomed to fight on the side of people that have no space for me in their social imagination, and I would probably be the first person that was strung up if they won. But the point is that they are the ones that are resisting on the ground, and they have to be supported, because what is happening is unbelievable.
So, it seems she’d rather cast her lot with the barbarians who’d “string her up” than implicitly support the Western hegemony responsible for her material well being, freedom of speech and physical security. So be it.
(hat tip – DesiDudeInGotham whose submission to the News page roused me from my blog slumber)
[previous SM coverage on Roy – “Back the Resistance” and “Tunku vs. Arundhati“]
Yes! More hysterical lack of perspective! Criticising Joan of Arc Arundati Roy is EXACTLY analagous to the Nazis! There is no difference!
Who says this is emotionally incontinent hysteria? Not me! I worship the Goddess of HOPE our Mother Arundhati!
Anyone who disagrees is a feckless NAzi!
And we support suicide bombing of markets in Baghdad, London, Haifa and New York! Because they are the ‘resistance’!
What next?
Sorry, my Cylon computer didn’t format the block quote in cmt #100 — do-over:
Well, fair enough. But maybe the right answer, in that case, is to have that discussion in a constructive, vigorous and yet open, civil way, rather than to respond by “screaming and screaming at [people like Arundhati Roy about barbarians and five-star activists] until you are sick.”
William Blum: “From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.”
Oh come on, constructive? What is constructive about anointing a hysterical egotistical half wit who supports suicide bombing? What is constructive about suicide bombing? What is constructive about configuring those who support busines in India and the creation of wealth as lackeys of Satanic global forces out to rape and destroy India and claim that they are forcing poverty to be perpetuated when every impulse of those people is to lift Indians out of poverty? To construe every failure and vulgarity of that process to some mythical and intellectually moronic conspiracy against the weak? That is bad faith. That is not debating in good faith to begin with. That is nothing but intellectual petulance, juvenile, cosseted petulance.
Plus Arundhati Roy supports suicide bombing. Her stance is morally despicable, and she is the handmaiden to extreme right wing fascism, and she has a track record now of supping with these fascists. She and her ‘disciples’ are so devoid of moral compass, and it’s time they were called on it.
But it’s OK – she is ‘one of the most beautiful women in the world’ and she ‘gives us all hope’.
This is laughable lunacy!
Incidentally, Scout, I didn’t say that “capitalism is a cancer,” as you perhaps are implying above. Extreme poverty and widening group-based inequality gaps are a cancer, something that invariably affects even the most wealthy and privileged in all kinds of ways.
Also, why doesn’t Arundhati Roy advocate Gandhian resistance to the American occupation in Iraq? Why is suicide bombing an acceptable form of resistance according to her?
William Blum: “[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care … the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them … Then they just don’t care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home – the ones who make it back alive – with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.”
Scout, your face is going to turn fire engine red and explode any moment now.
Whether or not you think Arundhati Roy is constructive (wait, don’t tell me, I think I know the answer) my point wasn’t that she is or isn’t, but that a more constructive response from you would be not to respond to her in kind, but to actually engage the underlying issues at stake here at a more constructive level — if not with her, then with everyone else in this thread.
But maybe you are all too human for that.
Good question Arun! Why doesnt the suicide bombing supporter of fascist movements support peaceful ‘resistance’?
Hmmmm?
Anyone out there, any disciples of Our Lady Fatima of Roy have any idea why the most beautiful Goddess of Hope supports men who strap explosives to their body and kill women and children as long as they are resisting capitalism and empire?
Can anyone explain? Herman Goering? William Blum? Anyone?
Carl Boggs:”The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions… Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion.”
Also — what Saurav said.
I am addressing the issues Number Six! Read through all of my replies and you will see that they are measured and calm and excellent responses. Read my post number 99 – and check to see if Goddess of Hope and her school of airheads do ANYTHING to engage with the real underlying issues. I am talking about their stance which distracts from what matters, what is important, their feckless petulance and head-in-the-clouds narssicistic egotism masquerading as ‘concern’ and ‘activism’.
Anyone supporting suicide bombing and the murder of innocents as a mode of ‘resistance’ is labelled an hysterical lunatic and handmaiden of fascist murder – and so they should be. Can you differentiate between one thing and the other? Or are you only able to cut and paste the thoughts of others? Do you have an original thought? Or just a cut and paste button in your head?
Joan of Arc is being persecuted for supporting suicide bombers! The most beautiful Goddess of Hope is being taunted! By taunting her they are taunting all of us! Herman Goerring and Carl Boggs say so!
Oh brother where is your INTELLECT?
Robert Jensen: “The United States is a society in which people not only can get by without knowing much about the wider world but are systematically encouraged not to think independently or critically and instead to accept the mythology of the United States as a benevolent, misunderstood giant as it lumbers around the world trying to do good.”
So Arundhati Roy sat next to Hamid Gul…..and Winston Churchill shook hands with Adolf Hitler. What’s ur point?
And this makes her support suicide bombers how?
Yeah – The God of Cut and Paste!
Our Lady of Suicide Bombing Resistance, whoops, sorry, Joan of Roy, Arundhati of Arc, the Goddess of HOPE, the most beautiful woman in the world, the five star activist, her honor is saved by cut and paste.
Sad, sad, sad.
Read the above statement right at the top of Vinod’s post Anuja.
Arundhati loves Hamid Gul, he was sitting next to her fluttering his eyelashes as she smiled like the Goddess of Hope and signed her book for him in Islamabad – I wonder how she dedicated it? To Hamid, with explosive Love….
Only kidding. Look if she wants to have a photo opportunity with an extreme right wing fascist that’s her decision. But it makes her the moral equivalent of one who sups with a Hindutavadi scum. And Anuja, you really should keep up with Our Lady of Arundhati’s words – scroll up, scroll up and read her love for the suicide bombing ‘resistance’!
“You cannot say I’m taking away the livelihood of 200,000 to enhance the livelihood of two million. Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India’s richest people and redistribute it amongst two million of India’s poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?” Arundhati Roy
Comment #99 is your example of “measured and calm”?? Dear lord. I’d watch your blood pressure, dude.
Mr Cut and Paste
I think I saw a halo around her head once – and she was bleeding from her stigmata – and she is the most beautiful woman on Earth and the Goddess of Hope, and everyone else is horrible horrible Zionist-Globalisation capitalist rapists……
Right. Vinod’s quote. I jumped in the deep end. Apologies.
Iraq is being occupied illegally. American soldiers are legitimate targets. The situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we’re likely to see an attack on Iran, we’re likely to see an attack on North Korea and all the way down the road it could be even an attack on China within a decade, so I think what happens in Iraq now is incredibly important. The resistence is inevitable.
Mark Crispin Miller: “Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth.”
“(A country) cannot be run like (a corporation). All policy cannot be guided by commercial interests and motivated by profit. Citizens are not employees to be hired and fired, governments are not employers. Newspapers and TV channels are not supposed to be boardroom bulletins. Signing over resources like forests and rivers and minerals to giant corporations in the name of `efficiency’ and GDP growth only increases the efficiency of terrible exploitation of the majority and the indecent accumulation of wealth by a minority — leading to the yawning divide between the rich and the poor and the kind of social conflict we’re seeing.” Arundhati Roy
Number Six
Trust me dude, my blood pressure is fine! I had it checked last week. I just type fast and speak bold. Every sentiment in that post #99 is a call to the middle ground, if you can’t see that I cannot do anything, maybe mind your eye prescription, dude. Read it again dude, it is about responsibility, commitment to the coal face, realism, working hard to support the poor, against idiotic posturing and empty sloganeering against the ‘evil capitalist rapists’
In the meantime, the amount of pompous, feckless, stupid posturing that arises out of the personality cult of Lady Arundhati of the Assumption needs puncturing. Especially when she starts supporting suicide bombing, and manoeveurs as the sole truth teller in between cheering when another bomb goes off.
Now, why hasnt anyone addressed why Saint Arundhati supports suicide bombing and the tactics of the ‘resistance’?
What about the Iraqis who want peace and stability so the Americans can leave and are against the bloodshed of innocent people?
Have you developed a clinical suicide bomb yet Anuja? Let us know the recipe and the chemistry for that.
Let’s support right wing fascists in the name of ‘resistance’!
Yeah! More hysterical incontinence! America is WORSE than Nazi Germany! Get that? America is WORSE than Nazi Germany.
I have been following the arguments of folks like Roy for quite some time now, and I feel that what she says does have merit (ignoring her great prose, BTW).
My view is that a) unbridled globalisation harms the indigenous people b) capitalism without adequate safeguards is not a good thing either, and in the absence of policies that protect the people who cannot take advantage of the system, the rich-poor divide keeps getting wider and c) businesses are notorious for misusing their power to bend the rules to suit their motives [which are profit, profit and profit], fair play and rule of law be damned.
Regards,
Rajesh
“The International Coalition Against Terror is largely a cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world’s weapons, and they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction-chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modem history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war.” Arundhati Roy
Why don’t you guys answer a simple qs as to would you happily get out of your house if tomorrow you come to know some dam is going to wash away your home? No, not at all. you’ll be writing new blogs, taking on the streets, contacting the politicians, etc. to get this dam out of your way. You guys are such hypocrites. You guys are too selfish to understand any rationale. You want to serve your own selfish end and could care less about the displaced persons in any part of the world. You never ever mention how these guys are going to be rehabilitated. Don’t lecture us about Arundhati and her politics, first give us solution about the displacement problem and then talk about anything else.
Jinnah, I’m not saying that Kashmir and Iraq are the same, but what do you think would be the scenario if coalition forces left Iraq? The country would erupt and it would be in the hands of Zarqawi and his cronies. Guess what, Osama found a retirement spot. The US made a mistake by going into Iraq but now that they are in Iraq they have a responsiblity to set up a new goverment, help bring killers to justice and try to bring back the country to the fringes of stability.
KM, I wasn’t even born when the Emergency occured but by all accounts i know it is a shameful event and one that will stain the country’s history forever. Whenver there is a large presence of an army in any region Human rights abuses are bound to happen. Dr. Manmohan Singh acknowledged the fact and promised to work on it. There is no excuse for the rape of women or the killing innocent people. But tough measures are the only way to prevent more bloodshed, do you think that we can expect the same from the militants? Remember the attack during the congress meeting ? And now we have a Sikh PM and a Muslim President. Have you taken a look at China,Saudi Arabia, Sudans human rights ??? In a militarised zone these tensions are bound to happen. Look at the furore being made because of the boat capsizing, what would the navy gain by killing schoolchildren ? Removing the army is not an option but stricter punishments for human rights violations is. Arundhati Roy seems to be on a quest to paint India as a major abuser of human rights.
100 % agree with you there, Vinod !!! I dont understand what is the deal with this ideological anti-globalizationists (I made that word up). They will never see the positive aspect of globalization. A tell tell sign of extremist/ideologue.
Agreed again. Her stance on the Narmada dam in Guajarat, India is also on similar lines. The dam was supposed to spur economic activity in the poor areas of Madhya Pradesh, thus lifting people out of poverty, but she wouldn’t have any of that.
You’re kidding right? The very fact that so many people are discussing this topic puts paid to that blanket statement.
Saurav,
Ofcourse! My craving for alliterative wordsmithy, is satisfied elsewhere 😉 ducks for cover cowers in fear
But more to the point Saurav, if she has to make a point about how complex the situation at hand is, or how the fundamental rights of people are being violated in Iraq every day, she should find a less strident tone. I guess my biggest gripe with her is the way in which she expresses herself. Her teenage angst. It was cute for the first few pages in GoST. The melodramatic ‘I am doomed’ bit is not working for me. Or blather like this,
What is the resistance if it is not the vision? Or has she neatly compartmentalized the two?
One wishes that someone that gets as much media attention as she does would use it more effectively. Rather than express herself quite this way.
Vinod, I’m not sure you’re reading Roy right. She isn’t taking sides on ideology nor is she pushing herself to some strange logical conclusion. She’s taking the American rhetoric to it’s logical conclusion and exposing ts contradictions and hypocrisy.
And, also, just because someone benefits from something doesn’t mean they have no right to critique it. I find that argument shallow.
thoughtcriminal
Lets ruminate on that, shall we? =)
Noam Chomsky: “The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.”
Arundhati Roy is a beautiful person, inside and out. She is imensely talented, brilliant, compassionate, and articulate. Actress, author, activist. I love watching her speak. She is one of my all time favorite activists, combining just about everything I love about the human race in one person.
I believe before she is done she will have won every major award, including the Noble Peace Prize. She’s already won things from the Booker Literary Prize to the Sydney Peace Prize. She deserves them all and so much more. I have read elsewhere a nice phrase in relation to her: “A life of beginnings with no endings.” Amen. She is a new Tolstoy-Gandhi-Martin Luther King, Jr., only thankfully much more easy on the eyes. About time we had some compassion in action that looks the way you wish compassion in action would look. Or to put it another way, about time we heard the female side of the same argument.
She is just as great a leader as they ever were. Roy urges us all to take action. “We have to become the global resistance,” to the New Imperialism. Furthermore, she sees beyond simple resistance to all our untapped potential to build something better. “Another world is possible,” she teaches us. She is correct.
In a recent writing she explains why Bush is not welcome in India. Took the words right out of my mouth. About the Iraq War — which she correctly terms “the most cowardly war in history” — she distills this unequivocal statement: “The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future.” This fact, this appalling rape of human nature, is what really angers and alarms me most about the whole Bushite version of the fascist NWO (New War Order). Because it truly was an all-out assault on us all.
Of course all her outspoken opposition to war and greed and hatemongering has brouht her the wrath of the greedy, hateful, warmongers. Tom Frank tossed some of their usual brand of loving Christian compassion with this comment last year in The New Republic, “Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy.”
Ahhh, Jesus loves the smell of napalm in the air.
But thatÂ’s fine. She is attracting their attention because she is a very real danger to their New War Order. Bring it on! as I heard a famous idiot once say. Let the hatemongers expose the blackness of their own souls. Nothing is sweeter than when evil destroys itself.
Hmmm, in that case, maybe you should have your sanity checked instead.
Mark Hertzgaard: “Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America’s official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them.”
Are celebrities qualified enough to support such causes which involve political-social-economic-humanitarian concerns? From my part EVERYONE is. The logic is simple I have never been to the Narmada, I haven’t spent years reading about the agitation against the dam except for an article by Arundhati Roy. Yet with this current media barrage on the Narmada, I have formed an opinion that I blog about.
So if a writer or an actor is using their famous situation to stand up for a cause which is debatable, I think we should applaud them. For they make us think about what causes to stand up for.
“On the one hand, it is seen as a war between modern, rational, progressive forces of ‘Development’ versus a sort of neo-Luddite impulse – an irrational, emotional ‘Anti-Development’ resistance, fuelled by an arcadian, pre-industrial dream.
Both interpretations put a tired spin on the dispute. Both stir up emotions that cloud the particular facts of this particular story. Both are indications of how urgently we need new heroes, new kinds of heroes, and how we’ve overused our old ones (like we overbowl our bowlers).” – Arundhati Roy
Howard Zinn: “We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers,radio, and television.”
thoughtcrimminal…big up on the dead prez post..We need a new album soon!
The Roys or the Medhas or even the Amrtya Sens do not have a right to talk on behalf of the Adivasis (and which I dont think they claim to be doing), but are the Adivasis included in the decision making processes? If Coke decides to build a plant in Plachimada, as much as all of us in the cities say that it is good for the country and makes revenue, if the people of Plachimada say that they dont drink coke and they dont want Coke to take their water, their wishes should come first. They decide how their resources get used and not some few “intellectuals” or “technocrats” sitting in Delhi. Anna Hazare’s Ralegaon Siddi, Bablu and Mary Ganguly’s Timbaktu, Rajendra Singh’s projects in Rajasthan and Haryana are examples of successful sustainable projects even though they dont fall under the “high GDP==economic development” paradigm. Coming to the dams arguement,in the US, many believe the possibilites to be exhausted. The fact that there had been increasing opposition to the dam lobby, due to dam bursts in parts of Western Mass, and other siltation probelems, the previously unquestioned technology was being scutinized when the industry moved South to Latin America . The Hoover dam , down the years, has created huge salination problems downstream rendering a lot of previously fertile land unusable. Due to large amount of silt deposition, the power generation capacity of larger dams reduces drastically (in terms of electricity dams provide diminishing returns). The World Bank has been the main player in all the projects that were promoted in Latin America. These however were met by a lot of protests (not by the Arundhati Roys and the Medha Patkars, but the people who live there). The anti-dam movement in Latin America is one of the strongest.
I’m of very mixed opinions about Roy. The only book I’ve read of hers is The God of Small Things, which I thought was … not dreadful, but very trite. Banal. Unimaginative. I was reading it for a South Asian literature class, and maybe I just didn’t like how poorly she handled the idea of sexual abuse, when there were all these amazing writers who could write about it well. Untrivially. I only wondered why we couldn’t put up a better writer than that. (I know, I know, I’m ignoring all of her strengths, and many political and historical facts that put her in the position that she’s in today.) The War Talk book isn’t half bad. A little polemical, very depressing, but all over not as hideous as I was expecting, which is code for enjoying it.
I have long been an admirer of both Ms. Roy’s writing and her political stance. I enjoyed The God of Small Things, but think her non-fiction is a lot better. I was recently talking to a graduate student in English literature who referred to Algebra of Infinite Justice as ‘reductive’ in its politics. I happen to think it is incredibly important, courageous and exceptionally well-written. I think it asks some very important questions about the relationship between people and their governments – and, as such, raises issues that everyone should be concerned with it. They are polemical, certainly – but if to espouse a certain political position is necessarily reductive then there can be very little that can escape that charge.
You don’t have to agree with me or Ms. Roy. Go on and read the book, and then make your own minds up. But let us applaud someone who is prepared to stand up for what she believes in.
In the world we live in, such examples are all too rare.
Neil Postman: “Television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation… Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”
Well that was precisely the point I was trying to raise. There is a social movement analysis–large groups of people who are mobilizing around something (whether their treatment derived from race/class/immigration status or the U.S. occupation of their country) that focuses on the people and there is one that focuses on the people. And ideally, one would focuse on both to varying degrees–but the question for an activist is to what degree and which visions to support. I agree that I found some of the thinking that she is currently doing too simplistic, but I also think that the points that she raises are extremely important and lead to conversations like this. As opposed to someone like Bono, who is all wonderful and clearly a beneficent human being, but he never really tackles the fundamental power inequities in the world.
Well, I can understand your frustration. But a question of effectiveness for me is secondary to where she’s coming from–I think/hope that her ideas will continue to grow as she learns over time. Or maybe she’ll become embittered and cynical. The point is that she’s open and trying and not Christopher Hitchens, thank god.
There’s also involved in “effectiveness”–“effectivess at what?” How do you measure the amount of influence she’s wielded in legitimizing and publicizing the people she writes about, like those flooded by the damns? How do you measure the impact she may or may not have had on the people she met and worked with. I don’t know firsthand, but I do know that those people ought to have some say as well as to whether she’s been “effective.”
Further, as noted before, she is just one person and, I imagine, conceives of herself as such. The idea that a leader is the be all and end all of a struggle is among the best ways to dismantle it.
Hello,
Not a great fan of this blog but from today, thanks to this posting I will read this more regularly… This woman needs someone to kick her butt..she is incredibly stupid and she feels that just by composing sentences she can cause a furor..more like a guffaw…she is stupid and the booker committee needs to be kicked in the groin….
SR no detailed self-descriptions, please!
Boo hoo…shut up and mind your own comments…..I did not come and comment about you…so quiet…