Bush in India: Just Not Welcome

Arundhati Roy, Resident of Delhi ... novelist (Booker Prize winner) writing in The Nation today ...

It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimize the extent of our outrage. Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.

On May 31, 2003 Roy spoke at a national antiwar teach-in in Washington, D.C., sponsored by United for Peace and Justice. Counterpunch printed her speech.

When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media. Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the press. etc etc .,

One of the most potent, fluent voices against the illegal invasion of Iraq, before, during and since ....