Arundhati Roy: 'The Press Decides Which Revolutions To Report'

The celebrated dissenter on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, mass uprisings in the Arab world, the Anna Hazare movement, her old comrades-in arm like Medha Patkar and Prashant Bhushan, Maoism, writing and much else.

Arundhati Roy

Rajesh Joshi: The 10th anniversary of September the 11th attacks on the US is upon us. What do you think has changed in the world, or hasn’t changed, in these years?

Arundhati Roy: Plenty has changed. The numbers of wars that are being fought has been expanded and the rhetoric that allows those wars —that are essentially a battle for resources —is now disguised in the rhetoric of the war on terror, and has become more acceptable in some ways and yet more transparent in other ways.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing that has happened is that increasingly we are seeing that these wars can’t be won. They can be initiated. But they can’t be won. Like the war in Vietnam was not won. The war in Iraq has not been won. The war in Afghanistan has not been won. The war on Libya will not be won. There is this initial pattern where you claim victory and then these occupation forces get mired in a kind of slow war of attrition. That’s also partially responsible for the global economy slowly coming apart.

The other difficulty is that the more the weapons of conventional warfare become nuclear —and all this kind of air bombing and so on —the more it becomes clear to people who are fighting occupations that you can’t win a conventional war. So, ironically the accumulation of conventional weaponry is leading to different kinds of terrorism and suicide bombings and a sort of desperate resort to extremely violent resistances. Violent, ideologically as well, because you have to really motivate people to want to go and blow themselves up. So, [it's a ] very, very dangerous time.

You have been very critical of the war on terror, especially the US policy. Would you have preferred a Saddam Hussain or a Taliban regime in Afghanistan?

Well, it does look as if the Taliban regime is going to return in Afghanistan in some form or shape. And

As the tiger awakens: Mohsin Hafeez on Chinese Power over and Stakes in the US Economy

TOO much of a good thing is bad. So is the case with the kind of democracy espoused by the political structure in America these days. The recent debt ceiling debate in the power corridors of Capitol Hill smacked of the worst kind of politics one has witnessed in the history of the developed world.

The Tea Party thought it fit to bring the country to the brink of the most disastrous scenario that was averted at the eleventh hour. The looming threat of the largest economy failing to keep its obligations was just as unfathomable to us here as it was spooky to the rest of the world. Notwithstanding the deal, and more because of the process that preceded the ‘signed, sealed and delivered’ moment, the debt rating of the US was lowered a notch to AA+ from its premium AAA rating.

In the last over 50 years, the debt limit has been raised at an average frequency of one and a half times every year, without as much as an eyelid being batted. Why it had to unravel the worst form of political showdown in the process this time is beyond comprehension and it does not hold up the high values of the greatest nation on earth, of American exceptionalism.

The US has borrowed with reckless abandon over the last several years.

The bubble finally burst in 2007, bringing with it the Great Recession. Even the brightest minds in the country missed the depth of the issue. Those who got it were snubbed, being labelled as ‘Keynesian’ as if it were a dirty word not fit for public utterance. The stimulus during the first few months of the Obama administration was cut down to size, with the result that it became only a half-baked effort. The Federal Reserve kept lowering the interest rates, and then deployed the silver bullet in the way of buying in billions, a combination of mortgage-backed and other US treasuries, to keep the interest rates from rising.

China is the largest creditor of the US, with about $1.3tr in US treasuries and agency securities. The Chinese found the US to be a safe haven, and holding US treasuries in large amounts also helped them mai ntain a tight relationship between the yuan and the US dollar. With the economic structure of China moving towards consumption, partially to cater to the rising middle class, at the expense of savings,

By Larry Elliott: Guardian London

A trader at the New York stock exchange. The last four years have seen five key stages of the global financial crisis, with more likely to come.

From sub-prime to downgrade, there have been five stages of the most serious crisis to hit the global economy since the Great Depression.

Phase one on August 9, 2007 began with the seizure in the banking system precipitated by BNP Paribas announcing that it was ceasing activity in three hedge funds that specialised in US mortgage debt.

This was the moment it became clear that there were tens of trillions of dollars worth of dodgy derivatives swilling round which were worth a lot less than the bankers had previously imagined. Nobody knew how big the losses were or how great the exposure of individual banks actually was, so trust evaporated overnight and banks stopped doing business with each other.

It took a year for the financial crisis to come to a head but it did so on Sept 15, 2008 when the US government allowed the investment bank Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt. Up to that point, it had been assumed that governments would always step in to bail out any bank that got into serious trouble: the US had done so by finding a buyer for Bear Stearns while the UK had nationalised Northern Rock.

When Lehman Brothers went down, the notion that all banks were ‘too big to fail’ no longer held true, with the result that every bank was deemed to be risky. Within a month,

Pakistan And The FMCT By Ikram Sehgal

On December 16, 1993, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the “negotiations of ‘a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. Since then, negotiations for the fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) continue to be stalled on various issues.
The US contributed to the stalemate by refusing to accept international mechanisms for verification and insisting that National Technical Means (NTMs) were adequate to ensure compliance. The Obama Administration broke the impasse last year by its pledge to support international verification.
Fundamental differences between the 65 members of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on the purpose and scope of the FMCT have failed to evolve its final draft. Every member has the right of veto, countries have the right to halt negotiations; if the national interests of any member country is targeted the next stage is not possible. Many members question whether it would be a measure of nuclear non-proliferation or would it address the

US and Pakistan: The rocky AmPak affair- By Tariq Ali in Guardian

By: Tariq Ali
Published in Guardian UK, July 15
While US threats to hold back aid mean little, its hunting on Pakistani soil is heightening tensions

Nato fuel tankers in Pindi Gheb, 122km east of Islamabad, which were set alight by unidentified gunmen in May 2011. 

Ever since the US occupation of Afghanistan began almost 10 years ago two fictions, common in nuclear families, have dominated the discussion on American-Pakistan relations. The first is that neither side is fully aware of what the other is doing; the second is that a total breakdown of the relationship is imminent.

As long as the Pentagon bankrolls the Pakistan army to fight its wars and Nato troops remain in Afghanistan there will be quarrels, charges of infidelity, a reduction in the household allowance, perhaps a separation – but a divorce? Never. The cash-arms nexus is crucial to this most recent phase of the AmPak relationship. In return, as WikiLeaks revealed, Washington defines the rules of the marriage. It drones the country, it violates its sovereignty, its agents kill citizens on public highways. International law is arbitrary and Pakistan's latest response suitably mild: