Nixon called Indira Gandhi an “old witch” but she wasn’t as hostile to the US as Arundhati Roy, the narcissistic Indian novelist-turned-revolutionary who wants our enemies to hit us and hit us hard while she stands back and watches (login nobugs, pw bugmenot):
Personally I’m not prepared to pick up arms now. But maybe I can afford not to, at whatever place I am in now. I think violence really marginalizes and brutalizes women. It depoliticizes things. It’s undemocratic in so many ways. But at the same time, when you look at the massive amount of violence that America is perpetrating in Iraq, I don’t know that I’m in a position to tell Iraqis that you must fight a pristine, feminist, democratic, secular, non-violent war. I can’t say. I just feel that that resistance in Iraq is our battle too and we have to support it. And we can’t be looking for pristine struggles in which to invest our purity.
She’s basically aligned with Al Qaeda; it’s good to know that, in a “keep your enemies closer” sense.
H/t Michael Totten.
You stupid jerk! Open a new six pack and focus on NASCAR.
Will that help bring Saddam back to power in Iraq as Arundhati wants?
Sorry, Richard, i can’t resist. Your bringing up ol’ Arndhait again makes me think of our earlier posts about India & this review of Thomas friedman’s new book in The Progressive. The review is by an Indian, Amitabh Pal, & he says:
“When it comes to India, Friedman’s favorite, free market policies have failed to reduce poverty any faster than the state-oriented polices before them, according to independent estimates. The free market has done worse in some respects. The rate of improvement for key health indicators in India, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, slowed in the 1990s. This deceleration came about because of policies carried out as part of the neoliberal agenda, such as freezing public health expenditures, removing price controls on essential drugs, and subsidizing private hospitals at the expense of public ones, according to an article in The Hindu newspaper by Professor Gita Sen of the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore. Thousands of farmers have committed suiscide in rural India in the past few years partly as a result of “price uncertainty due to trade liberalization and rise in costs due to domestic liberalization,” according to a study quoted in Economic and Political Weekly.
One problem with Friedman is the extremely narrow net of informants who feed him notions that reinforce his beliefs. Friedman’s Indian corporate buddies keep on supplying him half-truths and distortions that he accepts as gospel because they fit into his worldview. And even when he has a sensible person as the source, such as Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen, he fails to the right information from him. So Friedman and his sources lay all of India’s problems on the supposedly socialist policies it followed till 1991. But Sen has said elsewhere that the “tendency to describe our past up to 1991 as some kind of left-wing Nehruvian socialism” is “really a monstrous absurdity.”
Um, Kim, the Indian people have been electing neo-liberal politicians who advocate an open economy since the early 90s.
Are they stupid?
There is an elite class in India of people, mainly high-born scoundrels, who did very, very well in the closed economy with the crooked government, so naturally they hated to see their privilege go down the drain. Arundhati is one of those people.
Arundhati never got rich “in the closed economy with the crooked government”. She got rich in the early 90s when her novel “The God of Small Things” won the Booker Prize & became a surprise international hit. She was never forgiven in her native country (& state) for:
1) writing truthfully (therefore “disrespectfully”) about the Kerala Communist Party 2) writing about love (& sex) between a high-born Christian woman & a low-cast Hindu man (accusations of “obscenity”) 3) becoming an activist opposing dam development & neoliberalization 4) being popular in the West 5) being a rich “artist” AND an activist (the two apparently should never go together; you know, “Shut Up and Sing”. Artists aren’t qualified to speak out on politics. They should know their place).
Maybe she’s hated for her bad haircut as well…
Arundhati is a member of the class that got rich in the closed economy, and her attitude toward neo-liberalism is strange indeed. On the one hand, she’s a child of the neo-liberal culture: she writes in English, practices Western-style feminism, sells her books in the global market, and jets all over the the world to lecture on the evils of capitalism for handsome fees.
Yet on the other she would deprive the mass of Indians and their fellows in the less-developed world of the opportunity to live as she does. So it’s OK for her to sell “The God of Small Things” in New York, but woe unto the lowly Dalit who sells froglegs to the French.
She’s arguably the biggest hypocrite and phony in the world. And how does a self-absorbed novelist come to have a deep understanding of global economics anyhow?
Richard, this is the same bullshit I hear all the time. So, only the poor have the right to speak out against neoliberalism? She’s rich, so she should be a happy-go-lucky celebrity, & keep her mouth shut?
Arundhati Roy has done more to support & aid Dalits than any representatives of neoliberalism, whether Indian or otherwise. From your point of view, I guess she would do terrible things like deprive thousands of Indian poor from the right to be forcibly removed from their homes & land. She would deprive them of the gift of being given a handful of rupees & shipped off to the slums of Mumbai.
For someone so “self absorbed”, it’s amazing that she has spent days & weeks among the Dalits, marched with them, been arrested with them, & given large sums of money to feed, clothe, & shelter them. She is tireless in her support of their plight.
Why should her being a novelist cause her to have any less of a “deep understanding of global economics” that you? Have you been praised by Nobel-winning economists? Have you gotten any international awards for humanitarian service?
Why do you cast stones at her?
A. She’s a hypocrite. She’s become quite wealthy as a result of the global marketing of her product (a superficial social critique), but she wants to deny the poor of India the opportunity to participate in the market that’s done so well for her.
B. She proposes a set of policies which, if implemented, would lead to a level of mass starvation that would make Mao’s Great Leap Forward look tame by comparison.
C. She uses her celebrity as a novelist to gain a platform as an economist that she’s not qualified to fill.
D. She hates the United States, the greatest force for progress and justice in the history of the world.
And she has a nasty temperament.
The poor of India participate in “the global market”?
Now you’re the romantic!
Have you read Mike Davis’ “Late Victorian Holocausts”? Check it out.
Have you even read any of her books?
She doesn’t present herself as an economist. She presents herself as a writer & an activist.
She does not hate America. What is it about American that she hates? Jazz? The redwoods? Walt Whitman? Yes, she does hate the Bush administration & its policies. Fortunately we haven’t come to the “George W. Bush IS America!” position yet (ie “Triumph of the Will”).
I’ve seen her interviewed several times. And I’ve heard other people talk about her charm, wit, & manners. No nasty temperament from what I’ve seen. Now, Ann Coulter & Laura Ingrahm…
Yes, she is from the middle class.
The poor in India – which is most Indians, thanks to Nehru – can participate in the global market by raising foods or making goods for sale in it. This is the way out of poverty.
See the post above, where this little fascist says: “…when you look at the massive amount of violence that America is perpetrating in Iraq, I don’t know that I’m in a position to tell Iraqis that you must fight a pristine, feminist, democratic, secular, non-violent war. I can’t say. I just feel that that resistance in Iraq is our battle too and we have to support it.”
Any supporter of the Al Qaeda/Baathist insurgency in Iraq is an enemy of America, and and enemy of the Iraqi people as well.
Arundhati is a menace, and the world would be a better place if she were removed from it.
“Most Indians” are poor because of Nehru.
Arundhati Roy is a “fascist”.
She should be “removed” from the world.
The poor of India can “participate” in the neoliberal global market by “raising foods”.
These are zingers.
PS: In what sense should Arundhati be removed? Executed? Imprisoned?
By any expedient means, I don’t care.
People who have no clue about trade, genetic engineering, water projects, or anything to do with infrastructure shouldn’t be setting themselves up as experts on Third World development. Roy’s theories are practically identical to the Maoist idealism that killed tens of millions in the “Great Leap Forward”, and the only reason she’s less a monster than Mao is that nobody who matters takes her seriously.
And yes, supporters of a fascist insurgency are themselves fascist, deal with it.
Don’t know that we can pin the entire blame on our opponents for the world wide and growing feelings against us. With the administration taking credit for AIDS programs’ successes in Botswana that it has yet to fund with actual dollars – a claim the Botswana gov’t and our representatives there completely deny – and taking credit for malaria program funding that it sought to cut, but the Congress restored cut funds to, we have some responsibility for creating our own difficulties.
Are you recommending the elimination of all those whose actions work against this country’s security??
See the Open Letter on Arundhati’s efforts to starve India’s poor.
Are you recommending the elimination of all those whose actions work against this country’s security??
Sure, why not? They want me dead, so it’s simply a matter of self-defense.