The used

I was reading this essay by Arundhati Roy (h/t Yves Smith). It's a (typically for Roy) very long, but quite interesting read. I don't agree with all of it, but this bit stood out for me:

Mischievously, when the government or sections of the Corporate Press want to run a smear campaign against a genuine people’s movement, like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, or the protest against the Koodankulam nuclear reactor, they accuse these movements of being NGOs receiving “foreign funding”. They know very well that the mandate of most NGOs, in particular the well-funded ones, is to further the project of corporate globalisation, not thwart it.

The rise of this talking point in Canada is sort of telling. Canadians need to realize that while they are very, very much better off than the average Indian, being primarily extractors of goods for the benefit of others (and not even establishing a decent-sized sovereign wealth fund or charging nearly enough royalties...) puts them firmly in the category of the used, not the users, in our dog-eat-dog global economy, which is not a good place to be.