Roy's rage
"Luckily, power doesn't last forever. One day, this powerful empire, like all others before it, will overstretch itself and implode. The first cracks are visible. The war against terror casts its net ever wider, and the hearts of American corporations bleed. A world ruled by a handful of greedy bankers and company bosses, that no one elected, cannot endure."
Phew! Strong stuff, that. Who's the writer? Why it's that bane of globalization, Arundhati Roy, celebrity author of the award-winning novel "The God of Small Things".
The quote above is taken from a piece by Roy titled "How one sells a war", which appears in today?s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The caption on the accompanying photo of the Indian writer is "Anti-Americanism — an American ideology?" and this allows her to ask:
"What does anti-Americanism mean? That one does not like listening to jazz? That one is against freedom of opinion? That one does not adore Toni Morrison or John Updike? Does it mean that one does not admire the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have protested against nuclear arms?"
She continues: "To accuse one of anti-Americanism is an expression of limited imagination, the inability to see the world in any way other than that proscribed by the establishment: Who isn't good, is evil. Who isn't for us, is for the terrorists.?
And then, this: "Following 11 September and the war against terror, hidden hand and fist are revealed. Clear to be seen is how the free market, like America's other weapons, descends upon the developing world with a bitter smile. 'The Task That Never Ends', is America's perfect war, the vehicle of unending, expanding American imperialism. In Urdu, profit is called 'faida', and 'Al-qaida' means 'word: God's word'. Many Indians regard the war against terror as a battle between Al Qaida and Al Faida. Word versus profit. At the moment, it looks as if Al Faida will win the upper hand."
She ends by saying that Soviet communism didn't fail because it was intrinsically evil, but because it contained the flaw that allowed too few to gain too much power. American capitalism will share the same fate, she predicts. In Roy's case, "predicts" means "wishes".
