Normally I never read books like this and by that I mean books from the Moore/Franken-Hannity-Coulter crowd. You get nothing insightful out of them but this one is pretty short and I wasn't doing anything else for the afternoon. Obviously then I knew what I was getting into before I read this book. I knew Arundhati Roy was but a socialist caricature. I knew she was involved with important and eminently serious groups like 'Queers Against Israel.' I knew she deeply hated the idea of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic terrorism. None of this seemed to matter much at the time since I find Arundhati to be a captivatingly beautiful woman (at times) and that level of attraction has a way of sort of momentarily evaporating my repugnance for these types of people.

The thing is I've built up an immunity of sorts to some of the aforementioned flaws. What I simply cannot stand however are folks who try to mask their American hatred as patriotism and that is precisely what Roy does with this book of hers. This is just another tract on how citizenship, good and productive citizenship, is mostly a passive activity, how nobody should be responsible to anyone else, and how pacifism and dissent are the highest forms of patriotism. In typical hippy/idealist fashion citizenship for Arundhati is more of a state of mind than anything else; it certainly doesn't place any demands on the individual. I mean, I love Jim Morrisson...doesn't that make me American ENOUGH?

NO! I hate the way folks like her try to pass off inaction as something noble. Citizenship is about sharing an intimate sense of responsibility to your community, passing something greater onto future generations, and, GASP!, occassionally having to bite the bullet (no pun) and storm a beach head or advance on a hill. I don't know where this idea came from that America, that the American idea, is just this right to do whatever you want. I really have no idea. I really have no clue how someone could tell you she owns a Doors album and then seriously expect you to consider her a decent citizen, a real American. Many of us have deep roots in this country, respect for its ideals, family who made supreme sacrifices so that we could live safely and freely. Books that make light of all this (especially when written by folks that have been here for like MAYBE 5, 10 years) is to heavy a burden to bear. This is just another diatribe that attempts to crush that patriotic spirit and convince us that wallowing around on the couch writing poetry would be a much better way to live ones life.

This isn't even authentic pacifism either, which I don't even have a problem with if it is indeed genuine. Roy detests the notion of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic warmongers though not suprisingly her pacifism seems to dissapear when it comes to these Islamic fanatics themselves. If HAMAS wants to blow up Pizza Huts and run into elementary schools with guns blazing then that's legitimate retaliation. If a United States Marine shoots a civilian who provides moral support to the folks planting IED's all over the neighborhood then he should be Court Marshaled, convicted, and slapped with a life sentence. Nothing new here folks.

This woman is in outer space. Anyone who mentions what a great tragedy a nuclear attack would be for the squirrel and butterfly populations (she really says this!) needs to reexamine their view of what exactly is important in this world.

We aren't going to change human nature anytime soon folks. War is something we're going to have to learn to live with.

Normally I never read books like this and by that I mean books from the Moore/Franken-Hannity-Coulter crowd. You get nothing insightful out of them but this one is pretty short and I wasn't doing anything else for the afternoon. Obviously then I knew what I was getting into before I read this book. I knew Arundhati Roy was but a socialist caricature. I knew she was involved with important and eminently serious groups like 'Queers Against Israel.' I knew she deeply hated the idea of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic terrorism. None of this seemed to matter much at the time since I find Arundhati to be a captivatingly beautiful woman (at times) and that level of attraction has a way of sort of momentarily evaporating my repugnance for these types of people.

The thing is I've built up an immunity of sorts to some of the aforementioned flaws. What I simply cannot stand however are folks who try to mask their American hatred as patriotism and that is precisely what Roy does with this book of hers. This is just another tract on how citizenship, good and productive citizenship, is mostly a passive activity, how nobody should be responsible to anyone else, and how pacifism and dissent are the highest forms of patriotism. In typical hippy/idealist fashion citizenship for Arundhati is more of a state of mind than anything else; it certainly doesn't place any demands on the individual. I mean, I love Jim Morrisson...doesn't that make me American ENOUGH?

NO! I hate the way folks like her try to pass off inaction as something noble. Citizenship is about sharing an intimate sense of responsibility to your community, passing something greater onto future generations, and, GASP!, occassionally having to bite the bullet (no pun) and storm a beach head or advance on a hill. I don't know where this idea came from that America, that the American idea, is just this right to do whatever you want. I really have no idea. I really have no clue how someone could tell you she owns a Doors album and then seriously expect you to consider her a decent citizen, a real American. Many of us have deep roots in this country, respect for its ideals, family who made supreme sacrifices so that we could live safely and freely. Books that make light of all this (especially when written by folks that have been here for like MAYBE 5, 10 years) is to heavy a burden to bear. This is just another diatribe that attempts to crush that patriotic spirit and convince us that wallowing around on the couch writing poetry would be a much better way to live ones life.

This isn't even authentic pacifism either, which I don't even have a problem with if it is indeed genuine. Roy detests the notion of the United States using its glorious military might to brutally smash Islamic warmongers though not suprisingly her pacifism seems to dissapear when it comes to these Islamic fanatics themselves. If HAMAS wants to blow up Pizza Huts and run into elementary schools with guns blazing then that's legitimate retaliation. If a United States Marine shoots a civilian who provides moral support to the folks planting IED's all over the neighborhood then he should be Court Marshaled, convicted, and slapped with a life sentence. Nothing new here folks.

This woman is in outer space. Anyone who mentions what a great tragedy a nuclear attack would be for the squirrel and butterfly populations (she really says this!) needs to reexamine their view of what exactly is important in this world.

We aren't going to change human nature anytime soon folks. War is something we're going to have to learn to live with.

I first want to start off this review by saying that "I love America." I don't love, or condone the malicious acts that iniquitous individuals in our government have committed in the past and are still committing today, but I love my country. I think sometimes individuals such as Arundhati seem to forget the good that has come out of America's struggle. Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." And there are many Americans that are vigilant today. Individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Milton William Cooper have died for the cause of vigilant libertarianism, which I think many of us forget from time to time.
What gets me in angst is that individuals such as Arundhati pontificate about the evils in our government, but fail to separate the people from the government, and this failure has a tendency to lead people into contemplating the wrong conclusions.
A case in point: Arundhati wrote an introduction to Noam Chomsky's book "For Reason of State"(which is reprinted in this book) and in it she says, "How has the United States survived its terrible past and emerged smelling so sweet? Not by owning up to it [in reference to the American Indian Wars], not by making reparations, not by apologizing to black Americans or native Americans, and certainly not by changing its ways. Like most other countries, the United States has rewritten its history. But what sets the United States apart from other countries, and puts it way ahead in the race, is that it has enlisted the services of the most powerful, most successful publicity firm in the world: Hollywood."
Now here where her diatribe suffers a syllogistic dilemma; the United States is a country not a political institution. Governments are political institutions entrusted to run a country and (so-called) qualified individuals are placed in-charge of running these institutions in the interest of the people.
But we must remember that sometimes-corrupt individuals egregiously take advantage of governments. This is known as Machiavellianism.
So, to put it in layman's terms, the inquiry is, who are the people running the government? And what are their individual crimes? When making arguments such as this, one has to identify the perpetrators of the crimes in question.
Perpetrators: meaning the people who committed the criminal acts!
Arundhati Roy (like many others) commits a dubious deed. Which is, she doesn't name names. Accusations without naming the accused are vapid complaints.

{{{GIVE US THE NAMES OF THE PERPATRATORS IN QUESTION!}}}
That's all I'm trying to say.

Furthermore, insofar as her remark about the U.S. rewriting history, the U.S. has not rewritten history. U.S. history is in abundance; it's just based on a litany of interpretations and opinions that cause one to resort to syllogisms to delineate the axiomatic conclusions. There are no absolute truths in history, that's just a fact considering the world governments' conspiracies that are hidden from public scrutiny. But we can come to some semblance of the truth by going to the library and reading books or researching on-line.
Now, if she wanted to point out that the U.S. educational system is mendacious with its ad hominems she'd be totally correct. So, then why doesn't she identify the individuals who own and control the educational institutions in question? Always ask yourself these questions when reading books like this. Don't ever take anything anyone says at face value.
And about her Hollywood comment: institutionalized-Hollywood is part of the governmental conspiracy, not part of the American people. The people that control, abuse and manipulate the government are the ones who own Hollywood. So the government never enlisted Hollywood because institutionalized-Hollywood has always been apart of the conspiracy.

Here's another remark she makes without thinking it through. "Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And of course, there's the business of war." If you read her entire account you'll see where she's going with this particular argument since she is referring to U.S. oil/war profiteering, but to say that wars are never fought altruistically is absurd, it depends on whose side you're on. There are noble causes, remember Nat Turner's "Great Slave Rebellion," Osceola and "the Seminole Wars", or "Shay's Rebellion." Yes, there are antagonist then there's the opposition who'll stand recalcitrant to antagonistic hegemony, (in other words, heroes who are ready to stand up against the opposition.)

Also, on page-50 she said, "To call someone anti-American, indeed to be anti-American (or for the matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie, you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good, you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorist." She then said, "I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realized that it's not foolish at all. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war." Her statement rings so true, but if she really believes that then why does she speak in absolutes and generality instead of naming the accused.
This book has a lot of faults, which is why what I'm going to say is in incongruity. I enjoyed this book. Arundhati Roy is an extremely articulate speaker and writer who I think is sincere about being the voice of the downtrodden. I just think she should be more mindful of what she says and start charging individual perpetrators with war crimes instead of marginalizing an entire nation when discussing world affairs. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to more of her writing in the future because I believe she has a good heart and means well.

"War Talk" is an urgent message to the world from one of the great activists of our time, India's Arundhati Roy. In this powerful collection of essays, Roy reflects on the state of the world in the "War On Terror" era and on the disastrous measures undertaken by the Indian government in regards to Muslims and other minorities. This book is a journey through the world as Roy sees it, experiences it. She is of course famous for her novel "The God Of Small Things," and here she achieves the same kind of poetry and cultural insight, she forms images with words, feelings with phrases. Roy chronicles with chilling detail massacres carried out in India against Muslims by radical right-wing government forces and forces us to confront our own government's hijacking by radical religious elements. The great piece in the book is "Come September," a powerful speech Roy delivered in 2002 that is a perfect expression of the post-9/11 world. She reminds us that we are not alone in the world when it comes to being attacked by terrorists, and that we have exported violence ourselves. Roy points out that September 11 is also the anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Chile against the elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende was killed and the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet took power and opened concentration camps and torture chambers through-out Chile. There is a beautiful style to the way Roy deconstructs language and terms, making us exam official doctrine for what it is. She writes a wonderful essay on Noam Chomsky which praises Chomsky's efforts and in a broader sense covers our need to analyze and question media. "War Talk" is a warning on a world being abused by neo-liberalism and radical capitalism which Roy believes will collapse in the same style as Soviet communism. In striking passages she imagines a world consumed in nuclear war, imagining a radioactive landscape where her loved ones and her favorite things have perished under a mushroom cloud, a warning to us all. One finds a sense of cultural unity here, when Roy describes the problems India faces we realize many are not so different from our own, human beings must fight the same evils wherever they surface. Those who want to read something with more depth and meaning should read Roy, her comments are well-researched and constructed, it's almost like the alternative to the kind of radical dribble we get from figures like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. Concerned citizens should read Roy and know the history of our world.

Whether or not you agree with Ms. Roy, reading her book will provoke you, and thus, to me, it is worth-while. It is particularly incendiary if you a regular American living a regular life. Ms. Roy spares few in allotting responsibility for the troubles of the world's poor and war-stricken. I did find her somewhat anti-American, but then, I'm biased.

Definitely take a look. Ms. Roy is extremely readable. I loved God of Small Things, and though I normally don't read political non-fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

This book exposes the truth about the injustices occuring in India without being clouded by passion. As always Ms. Roy gives the reader an honest account of what is actually transpiring. She gives the reader a portrait of the various people who are affected by these "social" projects without coming across as the evening news. This is definately a must read for anyone who believes in justice for everyone, not just the wealthy.

This book is the meat and potatoes - real food for real thought. And amazingly, people who dare speak out what is really the truth behind the visage of government and political authority usually get their butts whipped dearly, like jailed, beaten, extradited and so forth. So it's rather impressive to see this woman come out speak so both brazenly, that is "truthfully," and yet so eloquently and beautifully as she does.

Interesting thing about a tyrannical democracy; while dictatorial and authoritarian, which destroys many innocent lives, when it comes to the pressure of public opinion, that is where they must lay off and retreat, at least to certain extents, all depending on how much public opinion we are talking about. But the nature of the beast allows such so-called democracies (in name only) to ignore much public opinion if it really only consists of small numbers, which are usually masked to represent great numbers, which in reality, they do not, as most modern day polling will reveal. And so the governments can ignore these dissenters, but if admired by too many, or by others outspoken, they cannot punish them in fear of reprisal.

In this book, Arundhati Roy speaks of the injustices of her native country India, that is, the Indian governments hypocrisy and outright criminality within policies, denials, actions and non-actions towards its people. And while she is at it, she addresses a strong indictment against other governments of the world too, including Britain, the United States and Israel.

And so, Roy outlines a terrible policy of India in their attempt to create water damns, out placing thousands of citizens without relocating them into homelessness and poverty beyond repair. It's truly a disgraceful account of government abuses, which need to be addressed by the modern day Thomas Paignes, as Roy so appears to be.

What Roy next addresses is a train attack that killed innocent Hindus by the Muslims, although no group ever took responsibility. While this was a horrendous and terrible event, the subsequent actions enabled by a certain segment of the Hindus and endorsed, allowed and ignored by the Indian government was a far more substantial event of a despicable nature of societal damage, to the culture itself and the severe deterioration to what is perceived as democracy.

What I found so significant in Roy's book is that of describing how democracies and other forms of governments work with their subjects, the public, the media and so forth.

"In the twenty-first century the connection between religious fundamentalism, nuclear nationalism, and the pauperization of whole populations because of corporate globalization is becoming impossible to ignore. While the Madhya Pradesh government has categorically said it has no land for the rehabilitation of displaced people, reports say that it is preparing the ground (pardon the pun) to make huge tracts of land available for the corporate agriculture. This in turn will set off another cycle of displacement and impoverishment." P. 14

"In India if you are a butcher or a genocidist who happens to be a politician, you have every reason to be optimistic. No one even expects politicians to be prosecuted. To demand that Modi and his henchmen be arraigned and put away would make other politicians vulnerable to their own unsavory pasts. So instead they disrupt Parliament, shout a lot. Eventually those in power set up commissions of inquiry, ignore the findings, and between themselves makes sure the juggernaut chugs on. "

"Already the issue has begun to morph. Should elections be allowed or not? Should the Election Commission decide that? Or the Supreme Court? Either way, whether elections are held or deferred, by allowing Modi to walk free, by allowing him to continue with his career as a politician, the fundamental, governing principles of democracy are not just being subverted but deliberately sabotaged. This kind of democracy is the problem, not the solution. Our society's greatest strength is being turned into her deadliest enemy. What's the point of us all going on about "deepening democracy," when it's being beat and twisted into something unrecognizable?" pp. 33-34

"Its disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism. While we must not allow the fascists to define what the nation is, or who it belongs to, it's worth keeping in mind that nationalism - in all its many avatars: communist, capitalist and fascist - has been at the root of almost all the genocide of the twentieth century. On the issue of nationalism, it's wise to proceed with caution." P. 36


"Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer (whose worst excesses were supported by the government of the United States and Great Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without him.

But then, the whole world would be better off without a certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.

So, should we bomb president Bush out of the White House? It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go into war against Iraq, regardless of the facts - and regardless of international public opinion. In its recruitment drive for allies, the United States is prepared to invent facts." Pp.110-111

I also agree and worded the same thoughts prior to Bush's unwarranted attack and further do not support a continued effort of devastation that is occurring there.