Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

Dams are the temples of secular India and almost worshipped. They are huge, wet cement flags that wave in our minds. They're the symbol of nationalism to many.

The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.

I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised.

Privatisation is presented as being the only alternative to an inefficient, corrupt state. In fact, it is not a choice at all... it is a mutually profitable business contract between the private company (preferably foreign) and the ruling elite of the Third World

We're supposed to forget whatever happened in the past because 9/11 is where history begins. Okay, since 2001, how many wars have been started, how many countries have been destroyed? So now ISIS is the new evil - but how did that evil begin? Is it more evil to do what ISIS is doing, which is to go around massacring people - mainly, but not only, Shi'a - slitting throats? By the way, the US-backed militias are doing similar things, except they don't show beheadings of white folks on TV.

In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was brutal and killed hundreds of thousands of people - it was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I'm just saying that now, in these new wars, whole countries have slipped into mayhem - the women have just been pushed back into their burqas - and not by choice.