aluminum refineries, dams and mines. in order for these memorandums of understanding to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. therefore, this war. when a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its borders, what does that wall looks like? does the resistance stand a chance? should it? who are the maoists? are they just violent nillists. forcing their way to transcribal people goading them to an insurrection. what lessons have they learned from their experience. his arms fold undemocratic. is the sandwich theory of ordinary tribals being caught in the crossfire in the state and the maoists an accurate one. are maoist and tribal two

discrete categories as has been made out. do their interests converged? have they learned anything from each other? have they changed each other? the day before i left, my mother called sounding sleepy. i've been thinking, she said, with a mother's weird instinct, what this country needs is revolution. an article on the internet says that israel's musad is training 30 high ranking indian police officers in the techniques of targeted assassination. to render the maoist organization headless. there's talk in the press about the new hardware that's been brought from israel. ...

>> i wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. within minutes a young boy

approached me. he had a cap and a backpack schoolbag, chipped red nail polish on his fingernails, no outlook, no bananas. are you the one who is going in, he asked me? no. i didn't know what to say. then he took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. it said outlook, couldn't find outlook. [laughter] >> and the bananas? i ate them, he said. i got hungry. [laughter] >> he really was a security threat. [laughter] >> is backpack said charlie brown, not your ordinary blockade. [laughter] >> he said his name, but i soon learned that the force i was about to enter was full of people had many names and fluid identities. it was like bomb to me that

idea, how lovely not to be stuck with yourself to become someone else for a while. we walked to the bust in only a few minutes away from the temple. it was already crowded, and things happen quickly. there were two men on motorbikes. there was no conversation. just a glance of acknowledgment, a shifting of body weight, the revving of engines. i had no idea where we're going. we passed the house the superintendent of police, which i recognize from my last visit. he was a candid man, the superintendent of police. frankly speaking this problem can be solved by of police or military. the problem with these titles is they don't understand greek. unless they become greedy there is no room for us. [laughter] >> i told my boss remove the force and put a tv in every home. everything will be automatically sorted out. in no time at all we're riding

out of town. note t. it was a long ride. three hours by my watch. it ended up roughly in the middle of nowhere on an empty road with forest on either side. the bikes left and i picked up my backpack and followed the small internal security threat into the forest. it was a beautiful day. the forest floor was a carpet of gold. in a while we immerse on the white sandy banks of a broad, flat river. now it was more or less a sad flat at the center, stream anchor did come easy to wade across. across was pakistan. there, ma'am, he said to me my boys shoot to kill. i remembered that as we begin to cross. i saw us and a policeman's rifle sights, tiny figures in the

landscape, easy to pick off. but he seemed quite unconcerned and i took my cue from him. waiting on the other bank in a lime green shirt that said whole ask, was a slightly older security threat, maybe 20. he had a lovely smile, a cycle, boiled water in many packets of glucose biscuits for me from the party. we caught our breath and begin to walk again. the cycle it turned out was a red herring. the route was almost entirely non-recyclable. we climb steep hills and clambered down rocky parts along some pretty precarious ledges. when he couldn't will it come he lives in the cycle and carried it over his head as though it weighed nothing. i began to wonder about his been used village boy hair. i discovered much later that he could handle every kind of weapon, except for an lng come

he told me, gently. that is a light machine gun. three beautiful men with flowers in their turbans walked with us for about half an hour before our paths diverge. at sunset, the shoulder bags begin to crew. they had roosters in them which they had taken to market but had managed to sell. he seems to be able to see in the dark. i have to use my torch. the crickets start up, and soon there is an orchestra, a sound over us. i long to look up at the sky but i dare not. i have to keep my eyes on the ground, one step at a time, concentrate. i hear dogs, but i can't tell how far away they are. that terrain flattens out. i still look at the sky. it makes me ecstatic. i hope we will stop as soon. soon come he says, but it turned out to be more than an hour. i see the silhouettes of

enormous trees when we arrive. the villages seems patients. the houses far away from each other. the house we enter is beautiful. there is a fire and some people sitting around. more people outside in the dark. i can't tell how many. i can just about make them out. red salute, comrade. i am beyond tired. the lady of the house calls me inside and gives me chicken curry cooking green beans and some red rice. fabulous. a baby is asleep next to me. her silver anklets a claim and the firelight. after dinner i unzip my sleeping bag. it's a strange intrusive sound. the big zip. someone puts on the radio. bbc into service. the church of england has withdrawn its funds from the project citing anti-mental

degradation and rights violations of the tribe. i can hear cowbells shuffling, cattle farming, all is well with the world. my eyes close. we're up at five, on the move by six. and another couple of hours we crossed another river. we walk through some beautiful villages, every village has a family of trees watching over it like a clutch of huge benevolent gods. suite. but 11 the sunnyside and walking is less than. we stopped at a village for lunch. he seems to know the people in the house. a beautiful young girl forthwith them. he looks a little shy, maybe because i am around. bunch is raw papaya with red rice and red chili powder. we're going to wait for the sun to lose some of its behemoth before we start walking again. we take a nap in a little

gazebo. there is a spare beauty about the place. everything is cleaned and necessary. no clutter. a bamboo grid stabilizes the rafters of the attached growth and doubles as a storage rack. there is a drum, a basket, broken umbrella and a whole stack of flattened, empty corrugated cardboard boxes. something catches my eye. i need my spectacles. and here is what printed on the cardboard. ideal powder 90 hi energy explosive, class two, sdcatzz. we start walking again at about two. in the villages, the village we will go to we will meet dd, assisted comrade who knows what the next up of the journey will be.

he doesn't. there is an economy of information. nobody is supposed to know everything. but when we reached the village dd isn't there. there's no news of her. and for the first time i have seen a little clout afford. epic one settles over me. i don't know what the systems of communication are, but what if they have gone wrong. we are parked outside a deserted school building, a little way out of the village. why are all government buildings schools built with steel shutters for windows and sliding folding steel doors? why not like the village houses with mud and batch. because they double up as barracks and bunkers. in the villages, changes as schools are like this and these plans, three octagons attached to each other like a honeycomb.

so we can fire in all directions. he draws arrows to illustrate his point, like a cricket graph, a wagon wheel. there are no teachers in any of the schools he says. they have all run away. or have you chase them away? no, we only chase police. but why should teachers come into the jungle when they get their salaries sitting at home? good point. he informs me that this is a new area, the party has only entered recently. about 20 young people arrive, girls and boys, in their teens and early twice. chunga explains this is the village militia. the lowest rung of the maoists hierarchy. i've never seen anyone like him before. they are dressed in saris, some in freight fred, all of green fatigues. the boys wear jewelry and headgear. every one of them has a muzzle

loading rifle. homemade. some also have knives, axes, a bow and arrow. one boy carries a crude mortar fashioned out of a heavy three-foot shiite back. it is filled with gunpowder and shrapnel, and ready to be fired. it makes a big noise but can only be used once. still it scares the police, they say. but war doesn't seem to be uppermost on their mind. perhaps because their area is outside the home range of the dreaded government sponsored people's militia that has burned hundreds of villages and killed hundreds of people. they have just finished a days work helping to build fencing around some villages. village houses to keep the goats out of the field that they are full of fun and curiosity.

the girls, confident and easy with the boys. i have a sense of what this sort of thing and i am impressed. their job is to patrol and protect a group of four or five villages and to help in the fields clean wells or repair houses. doing whatever is needed. still, no deedee. after dinner without much talk everybody falls in line, clearly we are moving. everything moves with us. the rice, vegetables, pots and pans. we leave the school compound and walk single file into the forest. in less than half an hour we arrived in a glade where we are going to sleep. there's absolutely no noise. within minutes everybody has spread their blue plastic sheets, the ubiquitous, without which there will be no revolution. chunga spread one out for me. they find me the best place by the best rock.

chunga says he sent a message to deedee, and if she gets it she will be there first thing in the morning. if she gets it. it's the most beautiful room i have slept in and a longtime. my private suite in a 1000 start hotel. i am surrounded by the strange beautiful children with their curious arsenal. they are all maoists for sure. are they all going to die? is the jungle warfare training school be passed on the highway for them? and a helicopter gunships, and the laser range finders. why must they die? what for? to turn all of this into a mind? i remember my visit to the opencast minds there was force their wives and children like these. but now the land is like a raw red wound. red dust fills are not shows and

longs. the water is read. the air is red. the people are red. their lungs and hair are red. all day and all night trucks rumble through the villages of purdue bumper, thousands and thousands of trucks taking all to the port from where it will go to china. there it will turn into cars and smoke and sudden cities that spring up overnight. into a grocery that leads economists breathless, into weapons to make more. everyone is asleep, except for the centuries who take one and a half hour shifts. finally, i could look at the stars. when i was a child growing up on the banks of the river i used to think of the crickets -- i used to think that the sound of crickets, which always started up at twilight, was the sound of stars revving up, getting ready to shine. i'm surprised at how much i love

being here. there is no one else in the world that i would rather be. who should i be tonight? maybe deedee will come tomorrow. they arrive in the early afternoon. i can see them from a distance. about 15 of them, all in all of green uniforms running towards us. even from a distance from the way they run i can tell they are the heavy hitters. the people's liberation guerrilla army, for whom the term of imaging and the laserguided rifles, for whom the counterterrorism training college, they carry serious rivals, slr, to have ak-47. the leader of the squad is the comrade who has been with the party since he was nine. he is upset and extremely

apologetic. there was a major miscommunication come he says, again and again, which usually never happens. he wants to leave immediately because people in the camp are waiting and were worried. i looked around at the camp. we were leaving before we left. there are no signs that so many people had camped here, except for some ash the fires had been. i cannot believe this army. as far as consumption goes, has a lighter carbon footprint than any climate change evangelists. but for now it even has a gun and approach to sabotage. before a police vehicle is burned, for example, it is stripped-down and every part is cannibalized. the steering wheel is straightened out and made made into a rifle barrel. the of poultry stripped and use for ammunition pouches.

the battery for solar charging. but new instructions from the high command that captured should be buried and not cremated. so he can be resurrected when needed. showed i write a play, i wonder? gandhi, get your gun, or will i be lynched? [laughter] >> so that's just the beginning of the book. [applause] >> thank you. there are microphones here if you would like to ask a question. unless you're really question was. >> yes? >> i'd like to know, do you

still have the strong desire to write fiction? how large is your staff, and are you afraid for your life constantly? >> well, no, i'm not afraid for my life, because when you meet the kinds of people you meet in india, and the kinds of battles that are being fought, you know, once you start being afraid you cripple yourself. you just have to -- you know, i'm not a person who is that interested in being brave or being a martyr anything like it. it doesn't attract me. so i just think it's important to understand the kind of society we live in, to push, push as far as you can and should. i mean, to be strategic, you know. i mean, your calculations may go

wrong, but the idea, martyrdom is not an idea, and bravery is for horses. [laughter] >> but your question about fiction, you know, i do feel sometimes that the real prize that i have paid for what i have been doing the last 10 years is having to write things which i don't necessarily -- i mean, you know, i'm a little nod of the net, you know? there's a sort of responsibility, but say, for example, this space now, actually it's so fascinating because you're going to that forest and everyone is a fictional character. they don't have names that i don't know who they are. we became such a great friends,

but i don't know who they are. they keep changing their names. they take the names of their dead comrades. sometimes three people have the same name, you know? so if that's not fiction, what is, you know? these divisions that we can to make, sometimes are not really at your it, you know? i think i probably come to a stage where come in that forest, my nonfiction and fiction were married in a ceremony, they took each other. >> and the other question was how big is your staff? it's not just you, isn't? >> i don't have any staff. i am a lone republic. [laughter] >> thank you so much for coming. it's an honor to be able to hear you. i have a question about water.

is a kind of a theory of mine. many years ago my sons were in love with this tv show, what's the name of the show? seinfeld. they loved seinfeld. and i noticed that seinfeld would go into his refrigerator and get a bottle of water when he wanted a drink of water. and i thought it was very curious, and that was many, many years ago. but my question is, what is your understanding of how multinational corporations, and your water? does the government get the water to these corporations? i mean, how does that work? thank you. >> the thing is that a lot of the time i have spent following and writing about big dance, and one of the things that dams do is they still the river formed

the poor and they give it to the rich. and since the end of 1989, there has been a huge anti-dam movement around the dams on the river. and, of course, that movement was more or less sidelined and the dams were built. and now all that water is being given -- i mean, all these dams always building in the in the name of the poor, in the name of irrigation. but then the minute they control the water which is what dams do, they give it to the corporate, you know. and it's not just dams of course. it's even the mining of groundwater. there is any kind of regime of groundwater. but as many people say now, the big wars of the future are likely to be fought over water, you know, and the privatization

of water is a kind of -- is a unbelievable thing to me that you can actually deny people who can't afford to pay for it, water, and give it to, you know, coca-cola or whoever. >> you spoke so eloquently tonight about the struggles of this indigenous peoples in india. and in doing so it seems to me that you are sympathizing with the need to act violently in order to accomplish their goals. and, of course, the struggles they're going to are played out in numerous forms all over the world, as we know it. probably for some time. and yet we always associate as you mention very end, gandhi, gets her gun. just curious about your own thoughts about the role of nonviolent protest, and also the role of media and the revolution media that we've seen in the

last decade or so in order to protect the things that are so impassioned you over the last several years. >> well, actually i must admit that my views have changed over the past few years, because i have seen how governments have completely marked, marginalized and discarded nonviolent movements. but this is not to say that i am saying all movements should be violent. but when i went into this forest, you know, how it operates over there is the police move in posses of say, 1000. they go into the forest at night. and they surround a village and then they burn it, or they lie in wait. they capture people come out in the morning and then they use them as human shields and go in. and then they just -- i mean, the levels of violence that

they're prepared to perpetrate are crazy. and what are you supposed to do in the middle of a jungle? see, because donkey and protest is like very effective political theater if it has an audience. but how are people who are starving already to go on a hunger strike? how are people who have no money to boycott foreign goods or not pay the taxes. how have people who have nothing, and mean, what -- i mean, there isn't, these are people who have already been marginalized and sort of they are outside society. there is no audience that there is no money, there is no food, no hospitals, no schools. nobody is listening to them. they cannot sit down in the middle of a force and go on a hunger strike, you know. it's so easy for the stars of new liberalism to say that there is no alternative, as they keep

telling us. well, the point is that now these people are saying you tell us an alternative resistance policy. you know. if you don't have an alternative, neither do we. and my own thing is that if you cannot leave the boxer in a amount, if you cannot leave the iron ore in the floor, if you cannot leave the water into rivers, not every river and not every mountain, but their rivers and their mounts because these are not people who need aluminum and these are not people who need iron or. they learn to live in that forest for mulligan, you know. so if you can't leave that kind or in the floor and if you can't leave the box right in amount, didn't please don't preach morality to the victims of your war. [applause]

>> thanks for such a lovely maiden. i think i just read on the back of your book i think you live in delhi, is that right? so what i want to know, what i'm curious about is this they should just read, you said that had been published online? >> yes, it's been published on a magazine called outlook and also online. >> okay. so what i wanted was, living in delhi and out of this piece is public, do you -- i mean, do you feel tension walking around there? because i certainly would. i just wonder -- [laughter] >> how that works in all. >> well, look, the thing is that india, you know, urban india has become a very ugly place. i haven't had, i mean, i had to choose what i wanted to read to you, but basically in 1989 when

capitalism won its jihad against soviet communism in the mountains of afghanistan, everything in india change because india realigned itself. and sometimes the way i see it is the indian government opened to lock. one was a lock of the 16th century mosque. and they said the hindu right begin campaign saying that moscow should be demolished and hindu temple should be built. and the other lock was a lock of the market to international finance. and both these led to the unleashing of two kinds of fundamentalism, you know, market fundamentals and hindu fundamentalism. both actually rank on the kind of fascism. and those of us who have anything to say about either thing, or both things, have grown up on a diet of such, such

insult and such hostility, that now if it doesn't happen we miss it, you know? [laughter] >> you really feel like be wrapped, or why didn't you insult me, you know? am i doing something wrong? it has become a very dangerous place, but, you know, it's a very crafty government. so the attack comes on different people tactically, very differently. so if you are a village you just get picked up and killed. if they can call you a maoist, we have this tradition where the summary execution and the cops are the army people who do it either to muslims, many times in kashmir and the northeastern states, or any of that today.

they are all given bravery awards for so many killing. but with people like me, it, you know, i think, you know, i think there would be more careful about doing something like that. i hope. but it's a different kind of assault. there's a different kind of tactic that is employed. but for example, this piece i know the people who are probably the most upset by it are the mainstream parliamentary left. you know, in the state, who are also, i mean, battling transit and own state. they are not any longer the left. they have really lost the right to call themselves communists, but they are very, very upset and very vicious, you know.

but, you know, the thing is as i said to someone else earlier, it is not -- there is huge numbers of people engaged in this battle, not just me. i think there are also incredible networks of solidarity. the really frightening thing is the media, you know. there are news channels which will go after some of us individually, you know. they will stake me out like i am something criminal, you know. kind of get really vicious trying to wind their audiences up. but it's become a very, very ugly place. >> thank you. >> red salute, comrade. don't so nothing am a.

because maoism is still pretty and popular even in this country. the maoist third world is curious about something. based on your expenses in the past few weeks, where do you see the people's war in india going? is it going in the direction 1945 to 1949 with the negotiations between now and leading to the victory of socialism in china? or is it going more in the direction of 2006, nepal, where you basically have the top leadership of the revolution joining the government, being a part of the democracy that you essentially decry in your latest book? what do you think about that? >> well, actually the maoist movement has a long and interesting history, as i can briefly hinted at. and it is hard -- you know, it's almost entirely mount a movement inside the forest and inside the

indigenous people. and has not managed to survive outside the forest, not even in rural areas, and the planes. so right now, you know, it has its back against the wall, in a sense. but it is very, very entrenched in the areas where, you know, like in this area where i traveled your country and -- travel. it's a very, very precarious situation because i mean if you read this piece, there's a lot of -- there is this question of how easily a people's army can turn on the people, you know, when it doesn't need -- right now it's we, the people. but it can turn into a marriage at any time. and the other real danger is,

right now at least in some areas, it's a very disciplined movement. and other areas it is not. and right now almost all the weapons that they have our weapons they have snatched from the police. weapons that were supposed to be used against them. yeah. but if the assault continues, you know, it is possible that outside forces would decide to exploit the situation and borrow weapons which would be quite a disaster, you know. so i don't know how to answer the question more than his. i don't think there are any sureties. >> gives me something to chew on, thanks to. >> come to the north was. i am wondering if you have noted all five of the regions where the u.s. is waging

counterinsurgency wars right now, the regions within afghanistan, pakistan, iraq, yemen, somalia are increasingly being described in the meeting as tribal regions. and past generations, tribal regions of north america. is it all just about corporate access to natural resources, or is it also about tribal peoples having forms of social organizations that are completely determined by capitalism and capitalism can't stand anything less than total control? >> i think it's both things. you know, i think it is very, very interesting that at least in asia, if you look at afghanistan, waziristan and the provinces, northeastern states of india, and his entire belt which i have been talking about, it's the tribal regions that our

up, risen up and reward. in afghanistan that rebellion is taking the form of radical islam, and the radical communism. but the assault on them is for the same reason. it is to control geopolitically as well as to control and capture resources. it's a corporate attack. and the resistance, i think, is possible in those areas because they have an imagination outside this bar-coded capitalistic society that everybody else lives in, you know. and that is the one thing about india that is still wonderful, that there is a wilderness still there. there is an imagination outside of this, and that is why there is huge resistance there.

not just the maoists, but a whole bandwidth of resistance that has actually managed for quite a few years now them to stall the corporate onslaught. i mean, those ceos are still waiting in the airline lounges wondering when the mounds are going to turn into money. so i think that what is interesting for me is the fact that i don't expect an alternative to come out of an imagination that is are ready created the problem in the first place. if we can somehow tell ourselves that it is the wrong thing to do to exterminate those who have a wisdom and an imagination that might see us, then you have the

beginnings of what might be a kind of domino effect. make do with the bauxite that you have, you know? make do with the iron or. you can't take it out to trade on the futures market, i guess there may be no future. >> at the risk of offending, many of us in the middle east, from middle east consider you an international treasure. [applause] >> as long as i don't start believing that. [laughter] >> never believe the publicity. >> okay, thank you. smack when i was going up, and

iran, india was always a model, model for democracy. model for women's right to goes gandhi was prime minister. and what we found out later on is that democracy without liberty is meaningless. so my question is, from you, is i actually have two questions. one is what is to be done? [laughter] >> two, is i would like to touch, i would like you to judge if it's possible, to touch the issue of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, if you may. thank you. >> those are both very unfair questions. [laughter] >> look, i think that one real

problem is that what is to be done sometimes becomes such issues question that it it mobilizes us, you know. like there isn't a solution that's going to work for the whole world. but for me, the way i see it is that, for instance, this battle that's been fought in the forest of india, i think that if, if this -- if the people in this forest can win a pushback, it will give hope to many, many people, you know. and not just hope, because someone is defeated. because i don't think it will be

a defeat. i think that the feed will be a real victory, even for those who are prosecuting this war, you know. so i'm not the kind of person who has this kind of sort of monolithic vision, broad-spectrum solution for everything. but i believe that the battles being fought in certain places now that are crucial for us to be able to reimagine the meaning of happiness, to be able to reimagine the meaning of satisfaction. you know, we need to actually win a philosophical battle before we can win anything on the ground. and i think that, in some ways, the poorest people are the most

hopeful. it's very easy for middle-class people to lose hope, you know, the people who don't, some people don't have an alternative but to hope. and to align yourself with them is one of the things to be done. to lead the bauxite in the mountain is one of the things to be done. about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, well, i mean, it's a lot of bureaucracy, you know. the last time i was in america i was invited to be on a show, and as soon as he came and i knew that there was a lot of hostility there. and he said, do you believe that india should have nuclear weapons. so i said no, i don't believe

they should have nuclear weapons. i don't believe the u.s. should have nuclear weapons. [applause] >> and i don't believe that israel should have nuclear weapons. [applause] >> so he said that was not my question. [laughter] >> my question was do you believe that india should have nuclear weapons. so i said in the same tone of voice, i don't think india should have weapons, nor should the u.s., nor should israel. and it went on for about five minutes or 10 minutes, and eventually they never showed the program. [laughter] >> but, so the point is, i mean, i don't understand this -- how much should we submit to the language of imperial bullying?

you read the "new york times" today. president obama goes and wags his finger at hamid karzai and says we are very disappointed with you here who are you, you know? it's a kind of realpolitik which i think some of us should stay out of, you know, and keep the bar at what we think of as a moral position, which is that all nuclear weapons are a curse, you know. and, of course, will lead us to the edge unless we get rid of them. but the bargaining has a lot to do with, you know, what country has what kinds of power. now in india, the government is buying sort of discarded nuclear

reactors from here and other places, and allowing them to sign indemnities so that if there is, there'll be a limited liability, you know. >> we will do two more questions so that we can conclude this part, and then after the questions will have a last little portion. so i think for those of you in the line will do this gentleman and then you. those of you who are in line with questions afterwards, and the line of books can chat with there. thank you and. >> i thought that after the last couple of question i would did to the kinds of asking you something much less global. it started me thinking about how by just living what a pretty ordinary life on this continent day today make me complicit in events like that.

and i was wondering if you could just give us a little information about whether or not the indian government and the american government, i know union carbide has a, had anything at all to mitigate the damages in that event? >> no, they have not. they have not, and the people of bhopal still, they are still struggling, they are still on hunger strike. they're still asking for compensation. all of that is so going on. and meanwhile, union carbide has returned to india as dow chemicals and is being fêted by the government, including by the congress party who is trying to get them to set up some kind of hub. so, to answer your question nothing at all has been done. and that's why, in fact, nuclear liability bill is, you know, there are lessons from bhopal, how to limit their liability in case there is an accident.

>> thank you. >> this will be the last question. >> well, the more i listen to what's happening to citizens and their governments, the more that i really recognize that the people everywhere in our, in the same boat as being victims to the elite and their governments, and the elite around the world. you know, the united states and india kind of have an inverse relationship. we are an empire on its way down, and, you know, here in this country, we know that the cost of war is sinking everybody. and we are looking at the cost of war. here in washington state we have paid 22 billion already for iraq, and afghanistan. when is the conversation about any about the cost of war? india is among the top five importers of armaments. how are people, are people that

are able to push back at all? and what is that conversation about the cost of war and empire and armaments? >> well, it's a very good question, and one of the huge holes in what we haven't talked about today is the war in kashmir that india has been waging well in some way since 1948, but very explicitly cents 1989. where the u.s. has 180,000 troops in iraq, india has more than half a million troops in kashmir. an armed soldier for every 20 civilians. and and, you know, i often say that there is so much, you know, there is so much criticism of

the u.s. and the u.s. government's policy and u.s. foreign policy and very often people omit to make a distinction between people and their governments. maybe and democracies, the elite are sort of future with the government, but then there are, you know, there are obviously people who totally disagree with what their governments are doing. in america you have so many people who have been conscientious objectors, our people have refused to fight. but i don't know of a single one in india. you know, if there is a war against pakistan, or if it is about cash needs, you can count the people on their fingers who will object. and we're actually now living through a kind of system of

nationalism which becomes so painful because, because whether it is coca-cola or air conditioners or cars or mosquito repellent or all sort of soul do you wrap in the national flag. it's a very, very difficult time to do with things. and yet, i mean, as yet as i have said there are people in india who understood what's going on a long time ago. so that our resistance movements which are very, very entrenched. but what the government does there in india, it's like in 1947 them in india became an independent country, it became a colonial power. it began to and ask land and it began to use military interventions to sort out

political troubles. so from 1947, if you look at what it did within its own borders, which were marked out by the british, all these military interventions, and today the way it functions is they send battalion, since at the time to kashmir. it will send elsewhere. euro, so it's just like within its borders it behaves like a colonial power. and a lot of the weaponry that is buying i suspect is going to be used against us within, you know, to push through these policies, and these economic policies, it needs to become a militarized police state.

[applause] >> arundhati roy writes on political issues and was awarded the sydney peace prize in may 2004 for her work and social campaigns and the advocacy of nonviolence. for more information visit haymarket books.org.

this is the cover of a soon-to-be released biography of justice john paul stevens, and it is being produced by northern illinois press. sarah is here representing the publisher. and you might be one of the happiest publishers exhibiting here at the organization of american historians because we just learned today that justice stevens, as anticipated, i announced his retirement. >> yes, everyone at northern eleanor universe president excited about this book. it's really a twin cities. so to have the publication of what was already a very good book common side with the retirement is very timely. greatly appreciated by the press, and we are thrilled that such a terrific book coming out that it's such a timely fashion. >> will you tell me about the authors?

>> yes. bill is a journalist with more than 30 years experience, most of it with a chicago tribune. so he is a terrific writer. the book is written in a one of her journalistic style with a lot of clarity and a lot of punch. and a gene is a former state legislature and lawyer in illinois. and so he had access to a lot of the very high profile people that were interviewed for this book. and they make a great team. >> did justice stevens know about it, cooperate in at all? >> i wouldn't put a big sticker on this is authorized biography but justice stevens did sit for interviews with the office, was aware of the project. actually allowed us to take some photographs of some interesting trophies in his office. for example, he has a hole-in-one golf trophy that will appear in injury of the book. and he also kind of gave his blessing to the authors, anything people who were close to him, the people who are close to stephen are incredibly loyal to him. and so they would never have

spoken with the office without his say-so. so we are able to access to his family members, friends, former clerks, a lot of people with stephen's blessing. >> it was 10 years in the making, why so long? >> they also said that an astounding amount of research. the book starts with stephen's family and his childhood growing up in chicago. and does all the way through the current decision regarding campaign financing. and so the scope of the story they are telling is very in depth and the number of sources and research they have done is really impressive. they spoke with everyone from stevens' brother, some of stevens' children, people who worked with stephen's when he was a lawyer and a judge in chicago. president for but he was still with us who appointed stephen's. donald rumsfeld was asked about and having stephen's appointed. former clerks and with ginsberg. so the number of people required

a tremendous amount of time and research them and that is how it ended up to 10 years. >> what kind of competition do you have in this space? we should know for the audience, age 90, the longest-serving justice. he has got several decades of legacy on the court. have you been other big works on his career? >> there have been other books i've touched on transport. there's a good book that looks a very specific part of his judicial career. but nothing that is a true biography. and this book really personalized stevens who is a man who is beloved by the people who know him. so in addition to covering is very important work and his influential professional life, it also really presents really entertaining anecdotes about his personal life and stories from the people who know him best and love him the most. so this is really the most complete look at stevens demand that there is right now. i can't imagine anything that is rushed to print right now could

match it and scope. >> what is the on sale they speak the on sale date is may 1. >> thanks very much for talking to his. the book is called "john paul stevens: an independent life" and we are talking with the publisher of northern illinois press representative sara hoerdeman on this day when we learned as a nation that john paul stevens will in fact be stepping down from the court at the end of the term. thank you again. >> thank you. . .