Time ago now. More than six decades now. Its going to have two be with the return based system which doesnt make people furious with it. I think thats quite doable. The current code is loaded with provisions that are both complicated and make no policy since like the alternative minimum tax and the way a lot of tax benefits are subject to phaseouts which function as hidden marginal tax rate increases which nobody understands. For a lot of people the income tax has become kind of a black walks where you put numbers into the 1040 or into the software or you give them to your return preparer and it never comes out. This is your Tax Liability but they have no idea where that came from. I always have trouble saying this but i think its a good laugh if i can get it out. Taxation without comprehension is as an amoco to democracy as taxation without representation. We have got a real democratic problem when people are paying taxes and they have no idea they cant comprehend how those tax liabilities were arrived at. It just happens inside of the computer but its a process thats invisible to them. I think that has to stop. We have to have a system which is simple enough that people could comprehend where their Tax Liability came from, how it was derived and also that they can deal with the complexity with a minimum amount of assistance. I think its doable. But whether or not congress has the will to do it is another question. Host Lawrence Zelenak teaches tax law at Duke University school of law. He is the author of this book published by the university of chicago press, learning to love form 1040 two cheers for the returnbased mass income tax. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you peter. It really gets to me because i get to know these young men when im out there and i keep seeing some of them killed or amputated and i want out of there as fast as anybody else. And let the afghans fight their own fight. I just think we have to do it in a prudent way. What i try to say to the gold star mothers when im talking with them is we cant get to hung up on the defects of maliki and iraq or the defects of karzai and the afghan politics. We do have to keep a larger perspective that those who have died did not die in vain. You know go back. If i had said to anybody in 2001 that 10 years later there wouldnt have been another attack on the United States most of you listening would have said no you are wrong, its going to. Its because we did take the war offensive way to al qaeda and sure a lot of mistakes were made but if you stand back from the particulars we are safer today than we were in 2001 and we are well on our way to crushing al qaeda and crushing the jihadist. So i think overall that we have done a successful job with their military. When we analyzed arab spring we had an optimistic view. These are the rebels. The changes happening. It looks like eastern europe. It is not but then you have the view that the entire arab spring is only about the islamist and nothing could be done in the middle east. In my book i make the case that it is either one or the other. It is both at the same time so you are right. From 9 11 until 2011 that decade had gigantic efforts in the region. We removed the taliban. We removed saddam hussein. We gave space in those two spots for societies to emerge and to play the game of democracy. Many in washington forget that the next two peaceful nonviolent revolutions which have failed but they were there, were impressed by what was happening in afghanistan. Women were in the parliament in iraq and it was not only the baath party. It was a mediocre democracy but that is how democracies begin so i make the case in this book that they arab spring was influenced by two president s. One was the revolution of lebanon rising against the syrian occupation. It was not entirely successful because hezbollah remained in the green rebelish in iran in june of 2009 that also fraternized against the now the arab spring had its own experiments and to answer your question the jihadist who have been removed from afghanistan have recreated hubs all over the region. They are back in iran in the sunni triangle. They are rolling in yemen, and somalia. I wont even begin to tell you whats happening in syria where alnusra has expanded into lebanon. Each of them fighting in the sinai such as basically speaking yes me may we may have taken out alawlaki but this is the generation of the ancestors of al qaeda now we are talking about the third generation. Booktv continues with arundhati roy. She talks about the impact of economic globalization on third world countries and argues that the exploitation of workers on the margins of the Global Capitalist system goes largely unnoticed even though the negative impact is huge. This is about an hour and a half. [applause] thank you everybody. Can you all hear me . Yeah . Okay. What im going to do is to talk a little and read a little but to try and follow my Natural Instincts as a storyteller even though a lot of what i write is about politics. So capitalism a ghost story is about the ways in which capitalism works in the modern day which isnt always what we think. You know its not just about corporations and privatization and how does the colonized our imagination clinics how does it tame us . How does it make us into people we dont even know that we are . So i will just start, i will just start at the beginning of the book and i will just sort of read bits and talk a bit and if im being totally incoherent you can ask me questions afterwards about it. Is it a house or a home . A temple to the new india or a warehouse for its ghosts . Ever since and tele arrived on altamonte rd. In mumbai things have not been the same. Here we are the friend who took me there said, pay your respects to our new ruler. And tele belongs to indias richest man. I had read about this most expensive dwelling ever built with 27 floors, three helipads nine lifts hanging gardens, ballrooms, whether rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking and 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn a soaring 27 story hyatt wall of grass attached to a fast metal grid. The grass was dry and patches and bits had fallen off in nita rectangles. Clearly trickledown hadnt worked. That is why the nation of 1. 2 billion indias 100 richest people on assets equivalent to one fourth of the gdp. The word on the street and in the New York Times or at least was, that after all that effort and gardening they dont live in antilla. No one knows for sure. People still whisper about ghosts and bad luck and feng shui. Maybe its all karl marx faults all that cussing. Capitalism he said has conjured up such giant gigantic means of production and exchange that is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of another world whom he has called up by himself. In india the 300 million of us who belong to the new post International Monetary fund reforms middleclass market. Live sidebyside with the spirits of another world. The poltergeist of dead rivers, dry wells, Bald Mountains and denuded forests. The ghosts of 250,000 debt ridden farmers who have killed themselves and the 800 million who live potter first impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us and survive on less than half a dollar a day. But sean bonnie is personally worth 20 billion. He holds the majority controlling share in the Reliance Industries limited. A company with a market capitalization of 47 billion and Global Business interests that include ketchup Chemicals Oil natural gas polyester fiber special Economic Zones fresh food retails high schools Life Science Research and stem cell storage services. They recently bought 90 shares in a Tv Consortium that controls 27 tv news and entertainment channels and now most every regional language. The only nationwide license to forge a broad and a highspeed information pipeline which if the Technology Works could be the future of information exchange. He also owns a cricket team. You have these huge industrialists who have this crossownership of businesses and then you have a huge media houses for example a newspaper which has a readership of 17. 5 million readers in four languages and they own 69 companies which are Mining CompaniesPower Generation companies, real estate companieo they have this way of controlling information, imagination and business and land and agriculture. Riaa all is one of the handful of corporations that run india. Some of the others are other reliance. The growth has spilled across europe Central AfricaAsia Latin America and the nets are cast wide. They are visible and invisible overground as well as underground. They run more than 100 companies in 80 countries and one of indias oldest and largest privatesector power companies. They own minds gaughey its field steel plants telephone Broadband Networks and they run whole townships. They manufacture cars and trucks owned the dodge hotel chain Jaguar Land Rover day you a Publishing Company chain of bookstores and major brand of iodide salts and the cosmetics giant. They advertise the tagline you cant live without us. According to the rules of the gospel the more you have the more you cant have. The error of the privatization of everything has made the Indian Economy one of the fastestgrowing in the world however as with any good oldfashioned colony one of its main exports its minerals. Indias new megacorporations and those who managed to muscle their way to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. Its a dream come true for businessmen to be able to sell what they dont have to buy. The other major source of corporate wealth comes from the land barons. All over the world corrupt local governments have helped wall street brokers agribusiness corporations and chinese billionaires to amass huge tracts of land. In india the land of millions of people is being acquired and handed over to private corporations for Public Interest this special Economic Zones in Infrastructure Projects dams highways car manufacture chemical hubs in formula one racing. As it concentrates wealth onto the tip of the shiny pen tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy the courts the parliament as well as the media seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways that they are meant to. The noisier the carnival around elections the less sure we are that democracy really exists. Each new Corruption Scandal that surfaces in india makes the last one looked tame. There was a huge telecom scandal in india which involves millions of dollars but the privatization of telecom doesnt involve displacement and ecological displacement. The privatization of indias mountains rivers and forests does perhaps because it does not have the uncomplicated clarity of a straightforward out and pound accounting scandal or perhaps because its all been done in the name of indias progress. It doesnt have the same resonance with the middleclass. Basically what is happening now is in central india you know, one of the things that i have been thinking of for a couple of years which i find quite shocking is that there hasnt been a euro in india since 1947 which is when we became independent. There was a transfer of power. There hasnt been a single era in which the indian army has not been deployed against its own people. From 1947 where the youth think about kashmir these are from telling ghana punjab the army is constantly deployed against people that are supposedly within the nation. Now because of this new aggressive Economic Policy which involves selling the mountains, the rivers, privatizing and mining there is a war going on against the Indigenous People in the forests of central india. But the war is not just in the forests. Theres a a whole bandwidth of resistance movements. Inside the forests are the armed maoists gorillas. Outside there are militant Peoples Movements. Theres a whole bandwidth of movements which academics and journalists like to class of high as this is violence and this is nonviolent. This is violent and this is maoists but in fact people dont think like that. They think strategically so when you are out in the villages and the planes you can actually have the guerrilla army. You have movements which call themselves, in any case there are militant but not armed. Inside the forests which are now filled with Paramilitary Forces like in latin america and like in colombia and peru to have these hugely armed soldiers posing in on villages burning them, raping the women trying to clear the forest for corporations. The Prime Minister of india called these Indigenous People who are certainly armed. Most of the arms are snatched by the Paramilitary Forces with grenades and ak47s and rocket launchers. They were called indias greatest internal security threat. The government announced something called operation green hunts which was supposed to hunt these people down and clear the forests. So two years ago i actually went into the forest and spent some time with the gorillas and came out and wrote an essay called walking with the comrades. I will read you just a little bit adjusted kind of ibiza texture of what is actually going on there. The typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope controlled my appointment with indias againsl security challenge. Ive been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be in dante at four given timezone to give in days. That was to take care of dad whether, locke aides, transport strikes and sheer backlog. The note said writers should have camera and a coconut. The meter will have a cap in the Outlook Magazine and bananas. The password will be i wondered whether the meter and the greater would be expecting a man and whether i should get myself a mustache. There are many ways to describe dante vara. Its an oxymoron. Its a border town smack in the heart of india. Its the epicenter of a war. Its an upside down inside out town. The police where plain clothing in the police wear uniforms. The superintendent is in jail and the prisoners are free. 300 of them escaped from the old town jailed two years ago. Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches at the bazaars. Across the river in the area controlled by the maoists is the place police call pakistan. Theyre the villages are empty at the forest is full of people. Children who ought to be in school run wild. In the lovely forest villages the concrete School Buildings have either been blown up and fly in a heap or they are full of liesman. The deadly war that is unfolding in the jungle is a war that the government of india is both proud and shy of. Operation green hunts has been proclaimed as well as denied. Indias minister and ceo of the war says it doesnt exist, that its a media creation and yet substantial funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilized for it. Though the theater of the war is in the jungles of central it will have serious consequences for us all. In ghost of the lingering spirits or someone or something that ceased to exist. Perhaps the National MineralDevelopment Corporations new fallen highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. Perhaps its the harbinger of what is soon to come. The antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. On one side is a massive Paramilitary Force armed with the money that is the firepower. The media and the hubris of an emerging superpower. On the other ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons backed by a superbly organized hugely motivated maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history. The maoists and the paramilitary are ruling forces and have fought each other several times before. West bank in the 60s and 70s and then again in mirosha from the 70s onwards all the way through to the present. They are familiar with each others tactics and have studies each others combat manuals closely. Each time it seems as though the maoists or the previous avatars have not just been defeated but literally physically exterminated. Each time they reemerged more organized, more determined and more influential than ever. Today the insurrection has spread through the mineral rich forests in west bengal homeland to millions of indias tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world. I arrived well before well in time for my appointment. I had my camera, my small coconut and the powdery red teacup on my forehead. I wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. Within minutes a young boy approached me. He had a cap in the backpack chipped red nail polish on his fingernails. No bananas. Are you the one that is going and he asked me . I didnt know what to say. He took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. It said it means i couldnt find it and the bananas i ate them he said. I got hungry. He really was a security threat. [laughter] is backpack said Charlie Brown not your ordinary blockhead. I soon learned that the forest i was about to enter was full of people who had many names and fluid identities. How lovely not to be stuck with yourself to become someone else for a wild. We walked to the bus and only a few miles minutes away from the temple. It was already crowded. Things happen quickly. There were two men on motorbikes there was no conversation just a lancet of knowledge meant a shifting of audie blades the revv