Corporate propaganda for globalization in India is adequately represented by the all-singing shit-film Slumdog Millionaire, but the reality of most of India is much more accurately described by the great novelist and activist Arundhati Roy.

The publication of The God of Small Things catapulted Arundhati Roy to instant international fame. It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction and was listed as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997. It reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. From the beginning, the book was also a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance; It was published in May, and the book had been sold to eighteen countries by the end of June.

The God of Small Things received stellar reviews in major American newspapers such as The New York Times (a “dazzling first novel,” “extraordinary,” “at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple”) and the Los Angeles Times (“a novel of poignancy and considerable sweep”), and in Canadian publications such as the Toronto Star (“a lush, magical novel”). By the end of the year, it had become one of the five best books of 1997 by TIME.

Since The God of Small Things Roy has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes. She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States.

She also criticizes India’s nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron’s activities in India.

About the Narmada Dam, a truly monstrous construction which was gradually elevated to a height of 400 feet and displaced hundreds of thousands of villagers along the Narmada River, Ms. Ray wrote…

Big Dams are to a Nation’s ‘Development’ what Nuclear Bombs are to its Military Arsenal. They’re both weapons of mass destruction. They’re both weapons Governments use to control their own people. Both Twentieth Century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They’re both malignant indications of civilisation turning upon itself. They represent the severing of the link, not just the link – the understanding – between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers, air to life and the earth to human existence.

Official India was so delighted to have its own nuclear weapon that it made Prof. Dr. Abdul Kalam President of India in 2002, while Arundhati Roy was marginalized by Indian media for her opposition.

And even after India had already exploded an actual nuclear weapon at Pokhran, official India still claimed that even their 12 kiloton bomb wasn’t really a “nuclear weapon,” and their nuclear program was intended for peaceful purposes only!

Peter Arnett’s report from the town of Ben Tre in Vietnam ran under the innocuous headline “Major Describes Move” in the New York Times on February 8, 1968.

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong.

40 years later, in August 2008, the Third Armored Cavalry burned down a village near Balad Ruz, in Diyala, Iraq, “in order to deny safe haven to possible terrorists.”

In March, 2010, the beneficent US Occupation of Afghanistan likewise “saved” the town of  Marjah.

And now Barack Obama and Stanley McChrystal are planning the same kind of party for Kandahar!

Kandahar Becomes Battlefield Before a U.S. Offensive

“The first thing Afghans fear is the coming of more foreign troops, and the second thing they fear is the empowering of the current leadership and administration,” said Shahabuddin Akhunzada, a tribal elder from Kandahar city.

“The Americans, the international community, all the military forces have lost the people’s trust,” he added.

But for the next few weeks or months, until the Americans arrive…

Kandahar is still a living city.

At last count, AmericanDad’s “Open letter to Conservatives” had accumulated 778 recommends on TPMCafé, a site where the most recommended diary typically accumulates 20, and it isn’t hard to see why.

I was ready to cheer as soon as I saw AmericanDad’s Christmas-card of an avatar…

“Me and JonBenet on Her Fourth Birthday”

Hurrah!

And Russell King, aka “AmericanDad,” isn’t just any kind of dad!

He’s an American Dad!

Cue the music from Grand Funk Railroad, and try to memorize the inspiring chorus, America!

He’s an American Dad!

He’s an American Dad!

He’s an American Dad!

He’s an American Dad!

He’s an American Dad!

You get the idea.

Or maybe you don’t, because reading AmericanDad’s diary wasn’t much different from hearing a Grand Funk chorus 778 times in a row, and by the time you had read one of approximately 778 links in it, you might just as well have read them all, because the very same awesome idea appeared and reappeared in all of them.

For example…

You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

Don’t criticize Obama for doing exactly what conservatives already did!

And likewise throughout AmericanDad’s almost unending litany.

You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

Forget that Obama acts almost exactly like a neo-con!

Forget that Obama also “enjoys socialized medicine while condemning it.” Single-payer was off the table from the get-go!

Forget that Obama also supported and continued humongous bailouts for the mega-banks, while millions of American families went into foreclosure with almost no help at all.

Forget that Obama also wants to “have it both ways” about enemy combatants/prisoners of war, and waffles all over the map about how and where to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Forget that Obama also endorsed “pay-as-you-go” and capped domestic spending while unemployment soared and millions of American families lost everything.

That’s not the point!

The point is that neo-cons criticize Obama for acting like a neo-con!

The point is distracting Democrats from the miserable hypocrisy of their corporate-conservative sell-out of a President!

And they love it!

Kabul, Afghanistan, 2009 (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

ee cummings, from Tulips and Chimneys (1923)

To pass “Healthcare Reform” yesterday, one last dose of shit had to be added to the soup.

At 4 p.m. ET Sunday, hours after the debate had begun on the floor of the House, Stupak announced that he and seven fellow Democratic holdouts had reached a deal with the White House and would vote in favor of the bill. Their decision ensured that the Democrats would have the votes to pass it.

The battle began in late June, when Stupak and other Democrats who oppose abortion demanded that the bill include specific language banning any taxpayer funding for abortions in new government-funded health insurance exchanges or at community health centers.

Democratic leaders and the White House resisted, saying a precedent set in 1976 with the so-called Hyde Amendment would stand and no abortions would be paid for with government money. That amendment has applied mainly to Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor.

The last-minute compromise: a promise that after the health care bill passed, Obama would sign an executive order affirming that it would not result in any government funding for abortions.

A few anti-shit purists mildly complained, but the chef’s core clientele celebrated in their board-rooms!

The Dow’s pharmaceutical components were among the very few stocks in the black on Monday, as drug-makers are expected to profit from the expansion of health-care coverage. Merck rose 0.3%, while Pfizer climbed 1.1%.

And what were the only remaining alternatives, after 14 months of non-stop “compromise?”

It was either Obama’s shitty soup, or lunatics screaming “nigger” in the streets.

Talent agent’s secretary tells him there are three acts waiting to see him.

“I hope it isn’t another bunch of goddamned aristocrats!” he says.

The first act comes in and a couple of the men immediately beat up all the women and children, and begin to shit and piss all over them.

“And what do you call your act?” asks the talent agent.

“Haiti.”

Then the second act breaks into the office, beats up everybody in the first act, locks them in a closet, and leaves. Just before they disappear, the talent agent asks them what they call themselves.

“The United States.”

Third act comes in, unlocks the closet, cleans up the first act, hands out free medicine, and sends all the children to school.

The agent is impressed. “What’s the name of your act?” he says.

“Cuba.”

Qué bolá, mamacita!

Jamila, left, plays on a seesaw with children of other female inmates on the prison yard of Pul-e Charkhi prison in Kabul, Afghanistan April 17, 2008. Jamila, age 7, and her mother Najiba who is serving a seven year sentence for adultery, have been in prison for 10 months. There are 226 young children in Afghanistan’s prisons, including many who were born there. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

The little girl on the high end of the seesaw looks stranded, and you can almost imagine that even if the other children wandered away, she might still float there, three or four feet off the ground, immune to the law of gravity…

And why should any natural law apply in that goddamned place, any more than any natural law applies in a video-game, beside a Humvee-space-invader, at a forward operating base in Helmand, Afghanistan?

LCPL Jordan Mitchell of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit plays a hand held video game lying on his cot next to his humvee at a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Friday, April 25, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

The The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as Passed is a transparent little document comprising a mere 2409 pages in pdf format, and Senate Democrats have made it conveniently available online.

One of the flagship provisions of this historic bill (“historic” meaning that this bill has already been discussed as much as the Magna Carta) will make it impossible for anyone to be denied health insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

Health insurance for all of us, even if we’re actually sick! That’s the name of the game, but it isn’t exactly the name of the bill, and although coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions has remained at the top of Democratic talking-points for 14 long months, I was surprised to see that the word “pre-existing” only appears 5 times in 2409 pages of legislative language, mostly in Sec. 1101 of Subtitle B, and…

Here it is! That awfully famous “section” in all it’s glory, along with a few typographical peculiarities which arise from pasting pdf into html.

Subtitle B-Immediate Actions to

2 Preserve and Expand Coverage

3 SEC. 1101. IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO INSURANCE FOR UNIN4

SURED INDIVIDUALS WITH A PREEXISTING

5 CONDITION.

6 (a) IN GENERAL.-Not later than 90 days after the

7 date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall establish

8 a temporary high risk health insurance pool program to

9 provide health insurance coverage for eligible individuals

10 during the period beginning on the date on which such pro11

gram is established and ending on January 1, 2014.

In Baghdad alone, whose vote is decisive in the election, Sadrist candidates, many of them political unknowns, were 6 of the top 12 vote-getters.

This tiny factoid is buried in the eleventh paragraph of an article in the New York Times with an already unpleasant headline…

Followers of Sadr Emerge Stronger After Iraq Elections

What does it mean?

If you want to cast a vote that says “I hate America,” there is nobody in the world you could vote for and say “I hate America” more clearly than you can say “I hate America” by voting for Moktada al-Sadr, and Moktada al-Sadr just swamped all other parties in Baghdad, in an election that’s supposedly the triumphant outcome of our genocidal occupation of Iraq.

Congratulations, imbeciles! You just spent at least a trillion dollars and killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and more than 5000 American soldiers to make a brutal anti-American fanatic the king of Baghdad!

Harharharhar!!!

This is what the imbecile George W. Bush created in 2003!

This is what the imbeciles John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton, and 26 other Democrats and 48 Republican Senators voted for in 2002!

This is what the imbecile Senator Barack Obama voted to fund in 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008!

This is what the imbecile President and Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has been commanding for the last 14 months!

Congratulations, imbeciles! You just spent at least a trillion dollars and killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and more than 5000 American soldiers to make a brutal anti-American fanatic the king of Baghdad!

Harharharhar!!!

Since a nation’s schools should reflect its real priorities, and since the United States is unquestionably the most violent country in the world, with two military occupations in progress, drone-assassins patrolling skies all over the planet, and a military budget greater than all other nations combined, it’s only natural that President Obama should include early-childhood training in the martial arts in his overhaul of education in America!

After careful consideration of the martial arts of many nations, and with all due respect to masters of karate, kung fu, surma stickfighting, evala wrestling, tinku, maculele, okichitaw, bakom-vacón, bojuka, chun kuk do, limalama, sli beatha, kbachkun boraan, kalaripayat, lathi, malla-yuddha, mukna, thang-ta, sumo, gwonbeop, kuk sool won, shippalgi, ssireum, subak, yusul, muay lao, tomoi, lethwei, naban, tegumi, buno, dumog, pangamut, yawyan, cheena di, lerdrit, baobom, vovinam, cuong nu, and kalinda, I finally settled on silat as a foundation for martial arts in American schools.

You can find a good introduction to the fundamental theory of silat in “Deathscapes of the Malay Martial Artist,” by Douglas Farrer. The first challenge of silat is understanding “(berseru) the shadows of the potent dead.” This begins with “the disjuncture of deathscapes.”

At the end of his or her training a silat master “lives in the cemetery in a mud hut walled with human skulls, devours human flesh, faeces, and dog’s urine, and consorts with menstruating prostitutes.”

And nobody wants to fight a cannibal who lives in a cemetery and drinks dog’s urine!