Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

by John Cusack

Is it possible to have a moral state? A moral superpower? I can’t understand those people who believe that the excesses are just aberrations.

I don’t think we have ever had a conscientious objector in the Indian Army. Not one. In the United States, you have this proud history, you know? And Snowden is part of that.

By the way, the US-backed militias are doing similar things, except they don’t show beheadings of white folks on TV. Or is it more evil to contaminate the water supply, to bomb a place with depleted uranium, to cut off the supply of medicines, to say that half a million children dying from economic sanctions is a “hard price,” but “worth it”?

Whatever else their faults may be, they were not radical Islamist states—Iraq was not, Syria is not, Libya was not. The most radical fundamentalist Islamist state is, of course, your ally Saudi Arabia.

Radical Islam and US exceptionalism are in bed with each other. They’re like lovers, methinks . .

JC: So, what do you think? What do we think are the things we can’t talk about in a civilized society, if you’re a good, domesticated house pet? AR: (Laughs) The occasional immorality of preaching nonviolence? (This was a reference to Walking with the Comrades, Roy’s account of her time spent in the forests of central India with armed guerrillas who were fighting paramilitary forces and vigilante militias trying to clear indigenous people off their land, which had been handed over to mining companies.13) JC: In the United States, we can talk about ISIS, but we can’t talk about Palestine. AR: Oh, in India, we can talk about Palestine, but we can’t talk about Kashmir.

JC: I just want to know what I can’t talk about, so I’ll avoid it in social settings. AR: You can say, for example, that it’s wrong to behead people physically, like with a knife, which implies that it’s alright to blow their heads off with a drone . . . isn’t it? JC: Well, a drone is so surgical . . . and it’s like, a quick thing. They don’t suffer, right?

embraced Cusack as a true comrade only after I opened his freezer and found nothing but an old brass bus horn and a pair of small antlers.

Even capitalists must surely admit that, intellectually at least, socialism is a worthy opponent. It imparts intelligence even to its adversaries.

All that money in one boardroom-bed—how do they sleep at night, Bill and Melinda?

But seriously—what is one couple doing with that much money, which is just a small percentage of the indecent profits they make from Microsoft? And even that small percentage runs into billions. It’s enough to set the world’s agenda, enough to buy government policy, determine university curricula, fund NGOs and activists. It gives them the power to bend the whole world to their will. Forget the politics, is that even polite? Even if it’s “good” will? Who’s to decide what’s good and what’s not?

JC: What is the meaning of charity as a political tool? AR: It’s an old joke, right? If you want to control somebody, support them. Or marry them. (Laughter) JC: Sugar daddy politics . . . AR: Embrace the resistance, seize it, fund it. JC: Domesticate it . .

JC: The first time you spoke at the World Social Forum . . . when was that? AR: In 2003, in Porto Alegre . . . just before the US invasion of Iraq.4 JC: And then you went the next year in Mumbai and it was . . . AR: . . . totally NGO-ized.5 So many major activists had turned into travel agents, just having to organize tickets and money, flying people up and down. The forum suddenly declared, “Only nonviolence, no armed struggles . . .” They had turned Gandhian. JC: So anyone involved in armed resistance . . . AR: All out, all out. Many of the radical struggles were out. And I thought, fuck this. My question is, if, let’s say, there are people who live in villages deep in the forest, four days’ walk from anywhere, and a thousand soldiers arrive and burn their villages and kill and rape people to scare them off their land because mining companies want it—what brand of nonviolence would the stalwarts of the establishment recommend? Nonviolence is radical political theater. JC: Effective only when there’s an audience . . .

Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum—all we are supposed to expect—but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.

violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony. JC: . . . As there’s no other way of implementing those policies except violently. AR: No way at all—but talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work.

The IMF and the World Bank, the most opaque and secretive entities, put millions into NGOs who fight against “corruption” and for “transparency.” They want the Rule of Law—as long as they make the laws.

In Julian Assange’s book—brilliant book—When Google Met WikiLeaks, he suggests that there isn’t much daylight between Google and the NSA.12 The three people who went along with Eric Schmidt—CEO of Google—to interview Julian were Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas—ex-State Department and senior something or other on the CFR, adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. The two others were Lisa Shields and Scott Malcolmson, also former State Department and CFR.

but for many of us in India who don’t consider ourselves “innocent,” surveillance is something we have all always been aware of. Most of those who have been summarily executed by the army or the police—we call them “encounters”—have been tracked down using their cellphones.

“‘See, ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out.”18 His point was that watching TV would teach them greed.

In “The End of Imagination,” the essay she wrote after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, she had gotten herself into serious trouble when she declared, “If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and antinational, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic.”20

“Wouldn’t you say,” Roy said for the record, or to anybody willing to listen, “that nuclear weapons are the inevitable, toxic corollary of the idea of the Great Nation?”

AR: And—I might as well say it now that I’m in the Red Square—to capitalism. Every time I say the word capitalism, everyone just assumes . . . JC: You must be a Marxist. AR: I have plenty of Marxism in me, I do . . . but Russia and China had their bloody revolutions and even while they were Communist, they had the same idea about generating wealth—tear it out of the bowels of the earth. And now they have come out with the same idea in the end . . . you know, capitalism. But capitalism will fail, too. We need a new imagination. Until then, we’re all just out here . .

I mean what’s a country? It’s just an administrative unit, a glorified municipality. Why do we imbue it with esoteric meaning and protect it with nuclear bombs? I can’t bow down to a municipality . . . it’s just not intelligent.

We talked about how the CIA knew—and was preparing for the fact—that the world was heading to a place of not just inter-country war but of intra-country war in which mass surveillance would be necessary to control populations.

Recalibrating our understanding of what love means, what happiness means—and, yes, what countries mean—might. Recalibrating our priorities might. An old-growth forest, a mountain range, or a river valley is more important and certainly more lovable than any country will ever be. I could weep for a river valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know . . .