Arundhati Roy
I’ve always enjoyed hearing Indian activist Arundhati Roy‘s critique of the Bush Administration‘s so-called war on terror in particular, and her analysis of US imperialism and globalization in general.
Now that the blowback from predatory corporatist feudalism is shifting to South Asia, she is particularly well-positioned to comment and make sense of it all.
Case in point: her recent article over at TomDispatch re the India-Pakistan conflict. Some excerpts:
Releasing Frankensteins
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war.
As recruiting agents for America’s jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the U.S. expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade.
Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders.
[…]
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state.
Read the whole thing here.
