Sunday, March 25, 2007

We



To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.


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Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use to first, shrink wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.


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To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.


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The battle...has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name.


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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.


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Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.
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It's very, very important to understand that war is the result of a flawed peace, and we must understand the systems that are at work here. You know, we must understand that the resistance movement in Iraq is a resistance movement that all of us have to support, because it's our war, too.
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People are so isolated, and so alone, and so suspicious, and so competitive with each other, and so sure that they are about to be conned by their neighbor, or by their mother, or by their sister, or their grandmother. What's the use of having fifty percent of the world's wealth, or whatever it is that you have, if you're going to live this pathetic, terrified life?


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You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.


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There have been tens of thousands of suicides by farmers in the country, and the government wants to dispute what a suicide is, who a farmer is.




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The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.


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Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?


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Why not have your nuclear bombs in your briefcase? All of these policies that America upholds, nuclear weapons, privatization, all of these things are going to mutate and metamorphosis into these dangerous things.


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The fact is that America's weapons systems have made it impossible for anybody to confront it militarily. So, all you have is your wits and your cunning, and your ability to fight in the way the Iraqis are fighting.

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2 comments:

ummahzy said...

You wrote:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.


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Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.


I hear her breathing sometimes to, but not as often as I'd like. Could you describe what you feel this other world will be like?

ummahzy said...

sorry, in my ignorance I didn't realise all were quotes of Arundhati Roy!

http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/roy/confemp2.htm