As in ROYGBIV.

Anyhow, last night a friend took me to Seattle's Town Hall in order to listen to Arundhati Roy, author of "The God of Small Things" and, most recently, "An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire." She spoke in conversation with Alternative Radio host David Barsamian.

He posed questions, she gave responses, and this is what I scribbled with a borrowed pen:

"The whole debtate between the Democrats and the Republicans, whether Bush or Kerry is better, is like talking about detergent. It's like choosing between Tide and Ivory Snow, both of which are owned by Proctor & Gamble."

"There is a system of economic disparity that is being entrenched in the world today. It's no mistake that 580 billionaires have the equivalent wealth of 170 countries... {Therefore,} this is not a disparity between rich countries and poor countries. It is a disparity between rich people and poor people. So, what do we do about it?"

"The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism. A few carefully bred turkeys are given pardon to Frying Pan Park (while 50 million others are slaughtered for Thanksgiving)... New Genocide creates the conditions for mass death without having to go out and kill thousands of people."

"In India, there is a distinction {and an understood bond} between the government and the people. Here, the synthetic creation of fear is what bonds the government and the people. It would be a disaster for the government if all of you started to feel safe... Not to be frightened here is a political act."

"Many of us think that the corporate media supports the neoliberal project. In fact, it is the neoliberal project*."

In regard to protest and progressive organization: "Now you musn't lose focus. Now, you can't think "If Kerry comes to power, then we can just go home."

"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people marched in opposition to this war in Iraq. Yet these supposedly democratic countries went to war. So that begs the question, are democracies still democratic?"

--I was listening to Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind" on the way to school this morning, and he is unsparing in his assessment that democracy is not and was never the intended mode for American governance--

"The American soldiers who are dying in Iraq are conscripts of a poverty draft. They {the fighters on both sides} are products of the same system. They are dying for a victory that will not be theirs."

"Poverty and terrorism are being conflated" in India and other South Asian countries, in order for governments to pull a tighter rein on people. "These acts {India's Prevention of Terrorism Act, the USA PATRIOT Act} are not meant for the terrorists. They are meant for you. They are meant to terrorize you. They are meant to pick you off (as an activist for change) and dominate the rest."

"We really need to reimagine nonviolent resistance. There is no debate more important than in the stages? progress? of resistance. While we have watched the invasion of Iraq, the torture of its prisoners, the plndering of its resources, we are still waiting for some pristine, secular, feminist, fully agreed resistance that will not come any time soon."

"Nobody moves to the left after they come to power, they only move to the right... Can you campaign for someone (Kerry) who's said that he will send more troops to Iraq? How can you? We have to remain committed to principle. We are soldiers who are fighting a different battle and we cannot be co-opted into this contest {referring again to detergent} between oxyboosters and gentle cleansers.

I look at this situation and compare it to what it must be like for a homosexual person watching straight sex: Interested, but not involved."

"We must snatch our futures back from the world of the experts."

Barsamian: "There is an alternative to terrorism. What is it?"
Roy: "Justice."

"The logic of terrorism and the logic of the war on terror both hold ordinary people responsible for the actions of governments."

"When violence is deified {as Roy asserted that it is here}, on what grounds can you condemn terrorism? Only when a government is steadfastly committed to nonviolence can it legitimately condemn terrorism."


* Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy
(although I want add on the Lorax's warning, "Unless")