August 24, 2004

Arundhati Roy: Public Power in the Age of Empire. Please watch this speech. (It begins at 8:25.) There may be no more urgent voice for the world to hear right now. "No government's condemnation of terrorism is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by nonviolent dissent. . . . Terrorism is a horrible thing. You could say that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free-marketeers of war. They're people who believe that the state does not have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence."
posted by scartol 20 years ago
  • I've heard Roy on Democracy Now before. She's incredibly articulate and approaches her debate from a different philosophical perspective. Roy's arguments flow from her sense of what is obviously good and right, not from what is cynically pragmatic. It's an interesting rhetorical approach.
  • Thanks for posting this!
  • This was very interesting - definately worth it to listen to the entire hour. I was impressed by Roy's clarity of vision when it comes to questioning governments and neoliberalism - however, I wish that she would turn her impressive criticism as sharply on her own side as well. She is such a brilliant woman, and yet she doesn't see how naive and idealistic the kind of protest-activism she was calling for can be. Perhaps it is very different in India, but when she started praising how "artists and filmakers come together..." I was thinking - oh god, she has no idea how much the counter culture types alienate the mainstream western world. Heck, they manage to alienate me with their clever but unamusing pastiche of clowning and black clenched-fist posters, and I'm on their side. Also, she starts talking about dissent as then end all and be all of public (as opposed to government) power, but what about those millions of people who are just happy with a world of capitalism built on poverty? They are not all unaware - and they vote again and again for these governments. They have public power too, which should not be dismissed, but talked about.
  • definately worth it to listen to the entire hour. Or one can read the transcript.
  • But then you miss her very nice voice - and maybe also the points where she makes subtle jokes :)
  • Someone else who likes to talk about the American Empire, but from a more enthusiastic perspective, is Niall Ferguson. Here's a new piece by him: American Terminator.
  • Imperial Margarine Robin Blackburn on Niall Ferguson, Colossus and Empire. Rehabilitations of colonial rule for today’s proconsuls in Baghdad and Kabul.
  • Niall Ferguson, ugh.
  • Arundhati Roy, yum.
  • Ferguson + Roy naked = ?