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Capitalism’s Real Gravediggers
Beware the ‘Gush-Up Gospel’ Behind India’s Billionaires
Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “pay your respects to our new ruler.”
Antilla Mansion on Altamount Road in Mumbai
Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this, the most expensive dwelling ever built, the 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches, bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, “trickle down” had not worked.
But “gush-up” has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2bn, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to a quarter of gross domestic product.
The word on the street (and in The New York Times) is, or at least was, that the Ambanis were not living in Antilla. Perhaps they are there now, but people still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, vastu and feng shui. I think it’s all Marx’s fault. Capitalism, he said, “ ... has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, it is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.
In India, the 300m of us who belong to the new, post-“reforms” middle class – the market – live side by side with the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800m who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than 50 cents a day.
Mr Ambani is personally worth more than $20bn. He has a controlling majority stake in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a company with a market capitalisation of Rs2.41tn ($47bn) and an array of global business interests. RIL has a 95 per cent stake in Infotel, which a few weeks ago bought a major share in a media group that runs television news and entertainment channels. Infotel owns the only national 4G broadband licence. He also has a cricket team.
RIL is one of a handful of corporations, some family-owned, some not, that run India. Some of the others are Tata, Jindal, Vedanta, Mittal, Infosys, Essar and the other Reliance (ADAG), owned by Mukesh’s brother Anil. Their race for growth has spilt across Europe, central Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80 countries. They are one of India’s largest private-sector power companies.
Since the cross-ownership of businesses is not restricted by the “gush-up gospel” rules, the more you have, the more you can have. Meanwhile, scandal after scandal has exposed, in painful detail, how corporations buy politicians, judges, bureaucrats and media houses, hollowing out democracy, retaining only its rituals. Huge reserves of bauxite, iron ore, oil and natural gas worth trillions of dollars were sold to corporations for a pittance, defying even the twisted logic of the free market. Cartels of corrupt politicians and corporations have colluded to underestimate the quantity of reserves, and the actual market value of public assets, leading to the siphoning off of billions of dollars of public money. Then there’s the land grab – the forced displacement of communities, of millions of people whose lands are being appropriated by the state and handed to private enterprise. (The concept of inviolability of private property rarely applies to the property of the poor.) Mass revolts have broken out, many of them armed. The government has indicated that it will deploy the army to quell them.
Corporations have their own sly strategy to deal with dissent. With a minuscule percentage of their profits they run hospitals, educational institutes and trusts, which in turn fund NGOs, academics, journalists, artists, film-makers, literary festivals and even protest movements. It is a way of using charity to lure opinion-makers into their sphere of influence. Of infiltrating normality, colonising ordinariness, so that challenging them seems as absurd (or as esoteric) as challenging “reality” itself. From here, it’s a quick, easy step to “there is no alternative”.
The Tatas run two of the largest charitable trusts in India. (They donated $50m to that needy institution the Harvard Business School.) The Jindals, with a major stake in mining, metals and power, run the Jindal Global Law School, and will soon open the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy. Financed by profits from the software giant Infosys, the New India Foundation gives prizes and fellowships to social scientists.
Capitalism’s real gravediggers, it turns out, are not Marx’s revolutionary proletariat but its own delusional cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith.
Having worked out how to manage the government, the opposition, the courts, the media and liberal opinion, what remains to be dealt with is the growing unrest, the threat of “people power”. How do you domesticate it? How do you turn protesters into pets? How do you vacuum up people’s fury and redirect it into blind alleys? The largely middle-class, overtly nationalist anti-corruption movement in India led by Anna Hazare is a good example. A round-the-clock, corporate-sponsored media campaign proclaimed it to be “the voice of the people”. It called for a law that undermined even the remaining dregs of democracy. Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, it did not breathe a word against privatisation, corporate monopolies or economic “reforms”. Its principal media backers successfully turned the spotlight away from huge corporate corruption scandals and used the public mauling of politicians to call for the further withdrawal of discretionary powers from government, for more reforms and more privatisation.
After two decades of these “reforms” and of phenomenal but jobless growth, India has more malnourished children than anywhere else in the world, and more poor people in eight of its states than 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa put together. And now the international financial crisis is closing in. The growth rate has plummeted to 6.9 per cent. Foreign investment is pulling out.
Capitalism’s real gravediggers, it turns out, are not Marx’s revolutionary proletariat but its own delusional cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. They seem to have difficulty comprehending reality or grasping the science of climate change, which says, quite simply, that capitalism (including the Chinese variety) is destroying the planet.
“Trickle down” failed. Now “gush-up” is in trouble too. As early stars appear in Mumbai’s darkening sky, guards in crisp linen shirts with crackling walkie-talkies appear outside the forbidding gates of Antilla. The lights blaze on. Perhaps it is time for the ghosts to come out and play.
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48 Comments so far
Show AllArundhati Roy is a super hero. The cardinal rule of ideology is dogmatic faith. Like a dog with a bone, the faithful sputter, growl and lose their minds when the hand of reality reaches out to them. Instead of letting the sleeping dogs of ideology lie, we should just give them a good swift kick in the butt.
Seconded. I would call our response political judo, the invitation for the 1% to blunder their way to their own destruction, but kicks in the butt are part of that.
In one African Country some 40000 people are being forcibly removed from lands their people have occupied for centuries. They are being moved into villages where they are expected to seek employment.
The lands they once lived on have been sold to massive international agribusinesses that will raise bio fuels on the same for export to the first world countries.
This is how Capitalism creates wealth and jobs. It impoverishes the many so the few can prosper.
No doubt there will be one or two African "Billionaires" created and the magazines like the Economist will suggest this proof that Capitalism "creates wealth".
See "strategic hamlets" Vietnam circa early 1960s for the model.
Oh, capitalism does create wealth, but for whom is the question.
Capitalism steals wealth. It does create poverty...tons of it.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
(J. Robert Oppenheimer - from the Bhagavad-Gita - Trinity Atomic Test)
========
"Capitalism’s real gravediggers, it turns out, are not Marx’s revolutionary proletariat but its own delusional cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith."
Marx predictd most of this. His commentary on monoploistic capitalism is spot on here. Marx believed that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.
However, without an organized revolutionary working class, capitalism will deteriorate into fascism, as seems to happening in India, and just about everywhere else under the sway of the international capitalist financier class.
The choice that the masses of the world face is Democratic Socialism or Fascism.
While your 2 choices are the most logical, others are possible. South Korea is an example of a serious improvement over what had been pretty straight forward fascism. When the late 1990s economic crisis hit, Korea was lucky enough to have quality leadership ready and waiting: Kim Dae-jung. In this case the "Shock Doctrine" worked for the people and reduced the power of the chaebols (corporate power groups). Some of the necessary ingredients are decent potential leadership candidate(s), a crisis to ignite the fuse (Occupy?), a populace with at least a modicum of real political understanding, and it is likely beneficial to have more than a 2-party system.
RE: "Capitalism’s real gravediggers..."
It's always been trendy to say that "Marx was wrong". And this is usually proclaimed by people who know little about Marx's writings. We are in a period now not unlike the era of the Robber Barons when we saw unimaginably rich people extravagantly expressing their wealth while claiming to be visionaries of a better world. During a crisis the big capitalists win big; smaller capitalists along with everybody else loses. Crisis is an integral aspect of capitalism, it is its mechanism for renewing itself - at tremendous cost to the many. There's nothing new about it. It certainly doesn't portend the collapse of capitalism.
Will capitalists bring about the end of capitalism?
Things that can't continue - eventually - don't. But by that time, untold suffering and billions of lives will be lost, damage to the natural world that may take millions of years to undo will have happened.
We can't wait that long.
The only force that can bury capitalism (hence, "gravediggers") BEFORE that damage occurs IS the global working class organized into a revolutionary force. I disagree with Roy here.
On the other hand the more that money "gushes up" .... the less wasteful .... consumption that goes on in the lower step, (the less chance the 50 cent a day crowd) have to emulate the boob tube group that they so admire and vote for;
ePie December 15th, 2010 4:05 pm
The Empire Iron Curtain empirePie December 15th, 2010
Empire irons the enclosure curtain the trump of terror the new empire iron curtain of despair with a global reach to put all in it’s breech promising forever war .......... to end all war
The new empire iron curtain the big Mac war franchise on the mobius strip malls of marks, ... marketed to feed on flights of fancy, to dull the color coded lunacy of lining up to ring the register of profit pie
The global war on terror is the new iron curtain to enclose us all while we shop for the season of ‘peace and goodwill to all’
all at our local mall. of society
Robert Oppenheimer really loved the Vedas - a great gift from our past.
The Bhagavad-Gita, the Song of God, is an interesting little book, but I am drawn always to the root - and the root lies far in the past - in times when history was orally held and transmitted.
My reading of this history indicates that the Rig Veda originated in this oral tradition in times pre-dating by millenia the written texts which have come down to us.
The point of relevance to Arundhati Roy's article is this:
The first Vedic people may have been our first civilization. If so, and even if not, they speak of both the fabled 'glories and discontents' of that way of life, as opposed to the semi-nomadic pastoralist's or the even more remote pure hunter-gatherer way of life - in fact, that of the Ice Age Hunter.
They were scientists and astronomers, and saw clearly the dysfunction of an artificial belief that mankind and the natural world could be separated without disastrous consequence.
A coffee friend of mine of long ago was a black haired dark-eyed Gypsy-type, whose ancestors were from India. He was very alive in a way that is hard to describe - perhaps like Arundhati is so obviously alive.
The Vedic people are no more - at first glance. Another collapsed civilization.
But are they really gone - or is it not more proper to view their seed as scattered to the four winds in the supernova which destroyed their civilization, but not them.
Our western civilization, also India's, also China's, perhaps all of our civilizations, are on the verge of massive upheaval as our one and only planet changes state.
One can only wonder at the scale and measure of the heavens - as did the Vedic People -
Thanks for admitting that you are one of the middle class Arundhati - and recognizing the paradox there. I feel the same. Last time I looked - this writer, a Celt - was originally an Indo-European - and before that - "Out of Africa."
Manysummits, enjoying my own sunbeam here in very cold Calgary ~
=====
PS: Eastman Kodak has just filed for bankruptcy - all gravediggers apply now ~
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16625725
Mike, if I were you, I would do much more reading with a critical eye from different perspectives before pronouncing on the "Vedic peoples". I say this seriously, because I have been curious about that part of history, have read different accounts (that differ from whitewashed and broad-brush accounts), and there is some major disagreement among scholars as to the chronology and some important details. And indeed I have read English translations of some parts of the Vedas themselves. The really strange thing is that for all the talk about the Vedas, it is very hard to find the complete English translation of all the verses of all the four Vedas. Invariably some verses would be missing in these translations which I know should be there, based on other references. Just try doing a search.
That said, there's no doubt that they are a great literary work. My reservation is about the piling of all kinds of things on to a "Vedic civilization." Just thought you might be interested, as you are a reader of the "Clash" and all.... I suppose it's not the fault of the Vedas for all the claims made by nationalists about the "Vedic civilization". They are what they are, and they're not the problem. The problem is with the claims and the aggressive spreading of one notion, one version of history.
Also, if you haven't noticed, some of the fiercest attacks on Arundhati Roy come from the people who hold a bit too strongly to a certain notion of all things "Vedic" and view anyone questioning that or offering a more nuanced version as enemies themselves.
Hi Alcyon:
My two principal references on this matter:
1) "Underworld" (The mysterious origins of civilization), by Graham Hancock, 2002.
2) "The Celestial Key to the Vedas", (Discovering the origins of the world's oldest civilization), by B. G. Sidharth, 1999.
-------------
Lastly, my personal knowledge as a geologist - of Earth's history, of its Ice Ages, of the paleoclimate and changing sea-levels of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition period - and my amateur interest in archaeology, anthropology and astronomy.
The cutting edge of exploration, like the cutting edge of intellectual exploration, is fraught with pitfalls, because it is terra incognita.
Few are the ones who wish to be first - many are those who wish to be first to be second.
The scholars are in dispute - that's where I come alive.
Mike
Hi Mike, thanks for mentioning your principal references. What prompted me to respond was this part of your post:
>>"The first Vedic people may have been our first civilization. If so, and even if not, they speak of both the fabled 'glories and discontents' of that way of life, as opposed to the semi-nomadic pastoralist's ... "<<
Because, if anything, a common (and so far, not challenged in any substantial manner) theory is that the people who composed the Rig Veda were most definitely "semi-nomadic pastoralists" themselves, who had recently (as in, less than a few centuries before composing) settled down. Then I remembered that this opinion is challenged by some in India, because it has some implications on a nationalistic version. And the extreme annoyance with Arundhati Roy on the part of some in India is also related because she does not readily accept certain notions.
Some years ago, I used to follow a controversy around a needless historical revisionist exercise in India out of nationalistic reasons among others. I say "needless" because there is a great deal of fascinating stuff from that part of the world even without any revisionism required. One thing led to another and I ended up reading a whole lot of stuff about the Indus Valley Civilization (also known as Harappan Civilization), the Vedas and their dating, whether there was even an Aryan migration into India, or was it the other way around, etc. And I have followed various online debates, too.
One particular controversy involved the attempt to depict the Indus Valley Civilization as a Vedic Civilization. I had either bookmarked or saved a lot of stuff, but can't access them right now. Here are just a couple of them. Anyway, I don't mean to or want to distract from the main article here. Maybe we'll have a chance to talk about it someday in the future. (That is one reason that I really want to see this threat of dangerous climate change to pass, in my lifetime - there is so much left on my list of things to do...like catch up on so much reading.)
The following two articles refer to the fact that the Rig Veda refers to the horse on several instances, whereas the horse was not a part of the Indus Valley Civilization.
"Horseplay in Harappa - The Indus Valley Decipherment Hoax"
www.frontline.in/fl1720/17200040.htm
"Of Rajaram's 'Horses', 'decipherment', and civilisational issues"
www.flonnet.com/fl1723/17231240.htm
The rise and fall of a Harappan city
http://www.frontline.in/fl2712/stories/20100618271206200.htm
"An open letter to Bangaru Laxman - II"
www.hindu.com/2000/10/11/stories/05112524.htm
>>You say "The scholars are in dispute - that's where I come alive."<<
I think I know what you mean. I used to chase after information and sit down reading all night in the past when something triggered my interest. But these days I've become kinda selective.
Hello Alcyon!
Yes - we've been pulled bodily out of our ivory towers and into the street - to fight for survival. We think (thought) blogging on climate and the environmental destruction would help - or we just had to try, even if we suspected it wouldn't.
And of course that's a metaphor. If things pan out in the least in the negative - we will end up literally in the street - or a cave - or, more realistically, as the Dark Mountain manifesto "Uncivilisation" points out - we will simply die in the millions:
"Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it is to die."
--------------
I only return here now for the few contacts, like yourself, that this weird cyberspace permits. Soon, we will lose even the Internet as a meaningful tool, if ever it was one.
We are so leveraged to complexity it is considered normal - but if my theory of the Ice Age Hunter Still Lives is at all valid - it is not.
I'm re-reading "Underworld", by the way - and given your interest, I recommend it highly. Hancock's science is solid - and conjecture can proceed from this base.
-----------
As to Arundhati and her article - the contrast couldn't be more glaring - she, a successful middle class writer and activist - yet with a conscience - and still no solutions.
When I read this article the thought that jumped into my mind was that India was on the fast track to their own supernova - as is China - as are we.
Naturally none of us really know what in the world is going on as regards Iran and the upcoming war (?), but to my mind the pedal has just been pushed to the metal.
All systems are now in place to quell a popular uprising - that's ominous - and fits in with what little we can glean from the geopolitical world.
So I'll read some on the origins of civilization - and blog here as long as I can.
Mike
Fascinating; "manythanks" for including this! I have been fascinated by ancient Indian history and I can date that spark to when having difficulty getting blood for a much needed transfusion, the attendng doctor told me that my A- type blood indicated that I was descended from the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. My parents being from Ireland, this is so very interesteing to me.
A Doctor I know, here in Louisville, KY is originally from India. I recall conversations where he told me about lost cities from ancient civilizations going back ten thousand years now buried under the sand and ocean.
Relating to the article here, it is very sad to see that the spread of "capitalism" to India, and indeed China and South East Asia, seems to be hyperbolic in the way that it is creating the small but tyrannical rich class while bypassing and further degrading the masses, rather than the slow motion destruction going on in North America.
sLiMsHaDy
Yes - it is fascinating, and I think it means much that an intellect like Oppenheimer was drawn to India and the Vedas too.
I can only recommend Hancock's "Underworld" - the remainder is conjecture - largely dependent upon one's personal ability to integrate astronomy, ancient history, pre-historical findings, and the geological revelations about past climate and sea level - inundation maps in particular, which attempt to take into account the other causes of sea level rise - isostacy, plate tectonics etc.. All well explained, or at least introduced, in Hancock's fascinating (and thick) book.
-------------
As regards Arundhati and India today - well - what to say?
Civilization overwhelms everyone - Capitalism likewise.
Almost like those Biblical floods.
Hopefully, some of us will survive - small comfort.
Mike
The Vedic astrologers declared the earth is on a 26,000 orbit around a, what they referred to as a Central Sun, a Black Hole. The earth is 26,000 light years from the Central Sun. Also they declared that the earth rotates on its own axis of 26,000 years which astronomers have verified.While on a long flight across the Atlantic in 1984 I was seated next to a nuclear physicist, a nuclear arms negotiator. He was in Nagasaki after the bomb when he vowed to spend his life to making sure it doesn't happen again. I had just finished a book written in the 1890's which quoted the Vedic astronomers realization's, from as much as 8000 years ago. When I mentioned this to the physicist he was astounded and said to me "that's the only thing I've heard that makes sense[meaning the information of the Vedci scientists]" The name of the book is "the Holy Science by Swami Sri Yukteswar[union with God].As for western christians, the universe revolved around the earth until 1991 when the excommunication of Galileo, by the Catholic church, reversed the excommunication when Galileo declared that the earth wasn't the center of the Universe, which was considered heresy because it went against church doctrine. The church then realized that in 1991 the universe had changed.
~ bogi666 ~
All who have studied the heavens seriously, as astronomers and philosophers, for the two are related, have seen the precessional cycle written plainly in the sky.
The Vedic astronomers were among these, as were the Mayans, the Polynesian Navigators, and many many more.
But the majority of the population has always been largely ignorant of the story written in the night sky, just as today, even with the Internet, the majority is ignorant of the precessional cycle.
Wallace Broecker always claimed that if one wished to understand climate, one must study and understand the Ice Ages - which effectively means knowing and understanding the precessional cycle and the other orbital periodicities of Earth. These collectively are know as Milankovitch Cycles, after the Serbian mathematician who first laid out clearly the possible effects of these astronomical cycles on the periodic and changing flux of solar energy at various latitudes.
But my point is this. Substituting memorable and easily remembered stories for detailed scientific knowledge has always been the way of humankind, especially, perhaps, in societies where oral transmission of such is preferred, either because the society is illiterate, or literacy is the exclusive province of the priestly class. (has much changed - really?)
The Vedas which have come down to us are of course written down, but they precede writing, and were once passed down orally - hence their emphasis on meter and memorable story.
Indra is one of their earliest and greatest gods - but scientifically Indra is the personification of the atmosphere, in all likelihood. One could go on and on - but that is for a book, not a blog.
Let's remember the main point.
Today, in highly literate America, in the Age of the Internet, where you can easily look up Milankovitch Cycles or astronomical precession and obliquity - how many have any understanding at all of these - or of science?
Your nuclear physicist picked up on your conversation in a heartbeat. Obviously he, like Oppenheimer, was somewhat familiar with the Vedas, and, being a scientist, could easily connect the dots.
What was that last poll? Two thirds of Americans are unsure if global warming is real - or manmade !!!!
And in your legislatures (and mine), creationism is to be taught along with evolution.
Soon, the tyrant masquerading as religion will envelop us all. You might be wise to forget your idea that the Earth is round, and circles a class G2V star?
If anyone survives the upcoming heat and planetary change of state - in a few hundred years or more from now, they will tell fabulous stories of giants upon the Earth, who reached out and touched the Moon, and sent pictures over silken strands of glass - who could call down the Sun, and obliterate their enemies.
Manysummits
======
bogi666 and Michael Desautels:
I am not disputing that advanced knowledge on certain subjects did exist, evolve, and even flourish, in that part of the world. My reservation is with piling everything under the umbrella term "Vedic".
From my own observation of current attempts at whitewashing history and revising history (sometimes resorting to forgery) clearly from a narrow nationalistic or even ethnic or racial agenda, AND, more importantly, from having read other accounts of more objective (as in, without any right-wing nationalistic or left-wing ideological influence) researchers who maintain a fascination and even admiration for the history of that place and period, I have to say that deliberately grouping everything under the umbrella term "Vedic" is either sloppy, lazy or with a clear agenda to push a certain POV. It is not helping, it undermines credibility, and often leaves a bad taste. And it is not fair to the countless victims of actions and policies carried out by those who supposedly upheld the "Vedas" (never mind what is actually in the Vedas!) over the eons, either. And it is not fair to countless people and communities who would have contributed to all this knowledge, without a doubt, but who would have had little or nothing to do with anything "Vedic".
It is one thing to set the record straight, especially considering the enormous, sometimes willful, ignorance of many people regarding the stupendous achievements of people of the past from regions that have NOT received fair treatment at the hands of mainstream (imperial) historians. At the same time, I feel whitewashing of history to be a most sinister, and, in its own way, a most violent, endeavor, with implications for the present times. As for me, I will NOT be a willing tool to spread such memes or be a part of such an agenda, especially knowing what I know from other, and what I consider to be more objective, points of view.
In case you didn't notice, my entire objection is to the use of the umbrella term "Vedic" as I have no doubt that it is a sloppy and sinister way to characterize an entire civilization from that region. It will be hard for those who have invested greatly in this meme to let it go and look for a better, more accurate term. It is not hard for me.
Disturbing reply:
You see ghosts where none exist.
=========
I'm sorry, Michael Desautels. Your reply only reflects a rather comfortable, safe approach that does not want to question the implications of unquestioningly using a term which you no doubt picked up during the course of your reading, and due to a certain lack of encounters and exposure to attempts at historical revisionism which involve this very word.
Is it too much to recommend caution while using a word, so as not to unwittingly spread a particular meme? On the other hand, I know that whitewashing does NOT bother some people as they have nothing to gain or nothing to lose by questioning it. Why disturb an intellectual investment, especially now that time seems to be running out?
I am doubly sorry.
Advice, which you dispense, is a form of criticism - or so I conclude, from my own experience.
You are so politically correct it hurts - and it is tiresome - and hypocritical.
============
It **is** a form of criticism. Or more correctly, an objection to using a broad brush term, and prompted by a huge assertion in your first post above:
>>"The first Vedic people may have been our first civilization."<<
That part reminded me of the controversy over the "Harappan horse" (I have posted links above on this controversy). Those links have to do with the theory, based on archeological and linguistic evidence, that the Indus Valley Civilization already existed when the people who composed the first Veda got there. Assimilation and integration must have started by then. And some form of confrontation, too, as seen by references to the enemy and the slaying of the enemies. There is a BIG difference in the language used in the Rig Veda compared to the subsequent ones. And yes, all of this goes against the "out of India" assertion. And it reminded me of my exposure to nationalists engaged in aggressive rewriting of history and not hesitating to litigate when their narrative is challenged:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_textbook_controversy_over_Hindu_history
It also reminded me of the "alertness" and vehemence with which some people go on to defend their narrative and attack anyone questioning it:
www.pbs.org/engage/blog/five-good-questions-story-indias-michael-wood
I agree that mischievous or sloppy portrayals by westerners should be called out. But so should the nationalistic attempts to whitewash history, and others, including westerners, unwittingly aiding in these attempts, too.
Yes, you could call it a criticism. So? But it is **anything but** "politically correct". In fact, it could be considered rude and one could potentially lose friends or attacked as an enemy by questioning this narrative. And all for what? Consider this: the people I will be offending (and have offended) are those that I am directly in contact with, in real life and online, whereas the people on whose behalf (that is, in my mind) I do this are from far away, most I will never meet. I have something to lose and NOTHING to gain by raising my objection, and it cannot be called "politically correct".
"may have been" - is not an assertion.
"westerners" - as in "The Clash of Civilizations"
"lose friends" - yes indeed - that's the hallmark of the politically correct - no friends.
You portray yourself as "politically correct" - often -
What started out as an interesting discussion on an ancient people, a people who composed the Rig Veda, deteriorated rapidly into this -
Good work
=======
A cubist lingum (phallus) for the worship of the destroyer.
Thank you, Ms. Roy, for this excellent article.
That dumb rich man has just created a ridiculously expensive target.
The Bastille has risen again! And so shall be destroyed, sooner or later.
Open the bomb bay doors!
This is the world Republicans want for America and just a bit watered down it's the world the Democrats want as well.
This is the perfect world for those who hold themselves as superior; the place where power rules all.
It's a fools game. Eventually everyone including the elite suffer. Along with the decline many things are lost and forgotten.
We've learned this time and time again throughout history, and yet we are in the process of repeating it. We do it consciously, many of us complicit with every choice made for the expedient over the humane. Unfortunately this time around the Earth has less in reserve to absorb the destruction.
It's really up to those in power to decide the fate of the world this time. With their nuclear weapons and complete control of the worlds militaries they've taken on themselves the ability to destroy on a level never seen before. And we know they will use it in support of the status quo.
If they resist the will of the masses and chaos ensues it will not go well for humans.
The headlong drive towards this certain disaster is reason enough to show that those who currently hold power are incompetent.
Things must change, but how? How do you dismantle the military state without force?
The dog has caught and chewed off most of it's tail. Dumb dog. Arrogant dog. Spiteful dog, soon to be Dead dog.....And what a dog-butt-ugly citadel, designed by idiots. Why do our funds flow so easily toward the idiots that waste our time and our environment. Scum of the Earth.
Hi,
I finally met Arundhati, March before last at Harvard. I have read everything that she has published and she is my friend. Let us get down to business. She is the voice of the voiceless and we have to convey her voice not "in reach" comments, however in outreach work. So send this article to your friends and neighbors.
Thanks for your time.
Don
Don ~
"A man without wealth is not without words"
~ A Dinka tribal expression, passed on to me from a South Sudanese friend - a tribal Dinka himself ~
Mike
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On top of everything else the place is UGLY!
The building was designed by US firm Perkins+Will who "is recognized as one of the preeminent sustainable design firms in the country" (Wikipedia).
It very interesting that the most cutting edge of "sustainable" buildings are most often designed for the super rich who amass their wealth through the most unsustainable means. This suggests that the green building movement, LEED etc. (for all the hype hasn't made any significant impact on the energy use of the built environment) is primarily a green (read Liberal) veneer to the blood and oil, red/black grime of the toxic death of capitalist development.
Isn't it, though? It looks like the guts of a cast-off computer tower. Portentous...
Looks like a prison guard tower. This should really offend Ms. Roy, who beside being a courageous fighter and writer, studied architecture and has a sense of beauty.
Another perspicuous dispatch from the estimable Ms. Roy. US oligarchs must envy their Indian counterparts....the cost of doing business here for them is much higher. BTW, how much longer until Jamie Dimon builds a bigger house?
I agree with Roy's analysis, pace Marx, that capitalists will destroy capitalism. In fact, Anglo-American capitalism is dead, but on life support, provided by generous taxpayers like you and you, courtesy of our benevolent central bankers. The question is: has it died soon enough not to take us down with it? Nor looking good.....
Nonsense!
It's a Friedmanite, economic miracle! Just like Chile! Even better!
Yeah. A miracle for about 1% of the population. The remaining millions can suck it up and stop whining.
Isn't something like this going on someplace else? Damn. What was the name of that place? Oh yeah! Planet Earth!
The first law of kapitalism; Buy or Die.
http://members.beforeitsnews.com/story/1625/304/Burning_Down_The_House.html?currentSplittedPage=0
Did anyone notice the role played by the fabled middle class?
They have theirs, and so, think nothing of undermining the 800 million living on 50 cents a day. The allegiance of fools, nationalism, was used to warp their minds.
Continents matter not, capitalism is a plague.
Is she saying the privateers don't really own the great bulk of what they claim to own? I think so. I think it's true everywhere, not just in India. So this changes our view of the privateers. And the dogma we were taught. The dogma our family/friends spout at the holiday dinner table, ehh? Who's crazy now?
Human nature being what it is, things will always degenerate. Israel goes from kibbutz to concentration camp; the land of George Washington goes from enlightened ideas (if not practice) to fascist dogma, the regal streets of London become endless miles of tat parlors. Societies are always evolving, for good or ill. Fear not, for when things reach their nadir, the fat, slovenly, lazy, dancing-with-the-starts-watching, ignorant, uncaring propagandised proles WILL, eventually, get off their collective ass and change things. It will not be a pretty sight!
Well said -- thanks!
Beautifully written. Painfully accurate.
What must End, What must Begin
War must end. Competition must end. Waste must end.
Peace must begin. Cooperation must begin. Bounty must begin.
Individual exploration must begin. Colonization of space must begin.
Capitalism must end. Poverty must end. Greed must end.
Selflessness must begin. Equality must begin. Compassion must begin.
Being rich must end. Being poor must end. Premature death must end.
Clean free energy must begin. Naturalism must begin.
Life must begin, again.
John Pontious 8/21/2011
www.johnpnts.wordpress.com