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July 5, 2015

An Evening With Arundhati Roy

By Rob Kall

notes and quotes from a 90 minute talk by Arundhati Roy. Wow. What a courageous, strong woman.

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Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
(Image by rob kall)   Details   DMCA


I missed the fireworks shooting into the sky this year, but instead, listened to some pyrotechnic ideas from Arundhati Roy, at a talk she gave tonight, to the 2015 Socialism conference.
Starting off talking about Independence day, she remarked, "I mourn the birth of all nations," then talked a bit about nationalism.

Asked about what she's writing now, she replied, "I'm writing fiction now because I don't know how else to say what I want to say... I've gathered a lot of ambiguity in me that can only be expressed in fiction."

I wouldn't call what I'm writing here an article, or even a narrative. I'm just stringing together some of the more choice lines I was able to write down as she spoke.

"In many ways we live in boundaries and borders and there are so many boundaries and borders which go through us."

"(There are times when) to keep quiet is as political as speaking out."

Discussing India getting the Atomic bomb: "The way the press was writing about it you couldn't tell if it was nuclear or Viagra."

She talked about how the Indian government used creation of giant dams to control water and people, about how tribal people were transplanted from farms to Bombay slums, how giving them money for their farms was like paying a judge in manure fertilizer. "The struggle needed a writer to tell the story... having a weapon of words to give to fighting people." The dams have displaced over 30 million people.

"Throughout civilization, throughout history, rulers have wanted to control the water."

"Power is fortified not just by what it destroys but also by what it creates, not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives.

Referring to nuclear weapons:
"When human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival"


"The poorest people in the world have stood up to the richest corporations, and even the corporations have not been able to do what they want to do."

"Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists."

In a jungle area, where indigenous tribal people were rebelling, she related what a policeman said: "The problem with these tribal people is they don't understand greed. Without greed there's no hope for us."

She wrapped up the talk discussing Mahatma Gandhi, offering a very different picture than we are accustomed to. "I recently was burned in effigy" for telling this aspect of Gandhi, characterizing him as one of the greatest scams of the 20th and 21st century. She described how he was "India's first corporate funded NGO", how he consistently was sponsored by Indian or British industrialists, how some of his early fights were caste related and how he wanted segregation, separating upper caste Indians from black Africans. She finished by discussing how the left in India have been unable to address the issue of caste. They do deal with untouchables, but mainly because they don't want them to leave Hinduism for Islam.

She spoke for about 90 minutes. Less than a mile away, at Soldiers Field Stadium, a lot of people were attending one of the last concerts of the Grateful dead. For me it was a no brainer. Listening to Arundhati Roy and getting to meet her, albeit briefly, was something I've wanted to do for a long time. The Socialism Conference hit another home run in my third year in a row attending it.
Now let's cross our fingers and hope she'll do that interview with me which we discussed.



Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel


Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.


His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.


Join the conversation:


On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution


and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation





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