Roy's enthusiasm, wit, and ferocity make this a pleasant read. The problem is that these essays and speeches are more polemical than insightful. We can praise her for her criticism given that this was published in 2004 while many of the events described were just beginning to unfold, but there is a lack of depth that makes this short collection feel redundant.

Overall, it's a nice starting point, but I'm left looking for a deeper analysis of her ideas about empire and how it fits into a greater geopolitical or historical narrative. Her style and energy are infectious, and it was a pleasure to reads despite my criticisms.

Some of my favorite quotations:

"Debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?"

"Calling anyone who protests against the violation of their human and constitutional rights a terrorist can end up becoming a self-fulfilling accusation. When every avenue of nonviolent dissent is closed down, should we really be surprised that the forests are filling up with extremists, insurgents, and militants?"

"...for most people in the world, peace is war - a daily battle against hunger, thirst, and the violation of their dignity. Wars are often the end result of a flawed peace, a putative peace. And it is the flaws, the systemic flaws in what is normally considered to be "peace," that we ought to be writing about. We have to-at least some of us have to-become peace correspondents instead of war correspondents. We have to lose our terror of the mundane. We have to use our skills and imagination and our art, to re-create the rhythms of the endless crisis of normality, and in doing so, expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things-food, water, shelter, and dignity-such a distant dream for ordinary people."

“I think the Iraqi people are suffering and we should liberate them.” That’s what I said early in the invasion of Iraq. I was 15.

Surprisingly, many people who supported the war didn't have the excuse of being 15. There were people who were old enough to remember Baghdad as “the Paris of the Middle East,” or U.S. support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, or even the brutal U.N. economic sanctions following the Gulf War that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from malnutrition and lack of medicine. Just about all I knew about Iraq prior to the invasion came from a sketch on a re-run of Saturday Night Live where president Clinton had a three way phone conversation with Saddam Hussein and Monica Lewinsky.

Roy’s 2004 collection of essays covers the hypocrisy of America’s invasion of Iraq, and the deceitfulness of India’s aggression against anti-government activist. The connecting factor here is how corporate-owned media acts as the government’s mouthpiece to convince the general public that’s what’s good “economic investment” or “spreading democracy” is universally beneficial, even when creating “economic investment” means displacing millions or “spreading democracy” means destroying the infrastructure and food production of a sovereign nation.

This is how we get a situation where, as in 2004, 42% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11 and 55% believed he had ties to Al-Qaeda. Or, in India, why the middle class remains complacent while the government demonizes tribal peoples trying to survive as landless farmers while land is auctioned off to international investors.

Roy rightly asserts that though online media can serve to dispel the press’s myths, it isn't able to change the crisis-driven nature of the news, where once the camera’s move on, people’s suffering disappears from public consciousness. (When was the last time we heard of Iraq’s reconstruction?) Still, she does still have hope for humanity, and for real democracy in civil disobedience that directly strikes at the economic order--as in Gandhi's salt marches that directly broke British trade law, not just weekend protests--which is a message so many activist need.

That being said, I noticed a few major factual answers. There is no evidence that Gulf War Syndrome is caused by depleted uranium, or even that it has any physical cause; it is mostly likely a psychosomatic reaction to the horrors of war. She also claims that Kennedy orchestrated the 1963 coup in Iraq that lead the rise of the Baath party and Saddam Hussein. While the CIA knew about the coup beforehand, there is no evidence that they were directly involved in it in any way, which isn't to say there aren't plenty of other coups, in Iran for instance, armed and orchestrated by the American government. And the United States certainly did support Saddam Hussein’s war crimes, providing him with covert intelligence even knowing he was using chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War. We know these things because we have declassified documents attesting them. Let’s stick to the facts so that our political enemies can’t use our mistakes to discredit us, unless you want to play Donald Rumsfeld, “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

I would love to recommend this book, but I would warn to be double check her sources.

I am an Arundhati Roy fan and require at least one of her books in each of my classes. I share her passions as well as her explanations for why things are the way they are in the world of politics in the global south. Plus she is gorgeous! And she speaks with power and conviction. I am bit of a groupie.

کتاب کا اردو میں ترجمہ پڑھا، اس لئے مناسب ہے کہ اردو میں بات کی جائے۔
اگر چہ کتاب میں براہ راست اس جناب کم ہی اشارہ کیا گیا ہے کہ ایک عام آدمی کا تصور ریاست کیا ہے تاہم عراق پر امریکہ کا حملہ، بڑے ممالک کا چھوٹے ریاست کے بارے میں روئے اور انڈین ریاست کا اپنے باشندوں سے روئے اس موضوع پر کافی روشنی پڑتی ہے۔
آج کے دور کے کنٹرولڈ جمہوریت میں ایک آدمی کا ریاست کے فیصلوں میں اختیار کم سے کم ہوتا جا رہائے، اور یہی بات روئے نے اس کتاب میں سمجھانے کی کوشش کی ہے۔

Roy will make you (or at least, me) think in really important ways and with an uncomfortable awareness of our political selves. She is not afraid to give specific references to events and facts and let you do your own "fact checking" (so you can cringe and squirm all over again at the horrible, uncomfortable truth). She has a really amazing talent for both biting, bitter sarcasm and inspirational hope. Written about a world in the midst of a New "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the book is as pertinent and enlightening today as it was then, if not more so.

arundhati roy is such an excellent rhetorician!!! despite some issues i found with her analysis of the world crises she investigates, i found her thinking really clarifying. tbh ashamed about my lack of knowledge about the iraq war & all the wars we have lived through. i can't believe i once thought we were living in peace time.

Chomsky-lite transcripts of speeches around the Iraq War. Heartfelt and powerful but somewhat redundant.

Roy's compilation of essays should be required reading for U.S citizens. While many of her examples center around events occurring in India, she ties incidents beautifully to the problems associated with imperialism, neo-liberalism, and the issues we face in this global economy. It's amazing how a book first released in the early 2000's addresses so accurately the world in which we still live in today. I highly recommend this book to those of us who are constantly seeking to understand the motives of our own government and what resistance strategies work most effectively.

What if I cry because of how much time has passed and how much has stayed the same. Actually it would be more productive to get angry. Anger can drive my actions and writing and fuel my hope for a better world.

Anyway Arundati Roy is an incredible writer, that's no surprise. This is the first non fiction I've read by her and it's excellent at getting her messages across. It's really disheartening to see how history is repeating itself with the Iraq war then and the Palestinian genocide now. It is heartning to see how despite that she still believes in the power of the people.

#PoliticalEyeOpener#.
With a flood of evidence supporting her point, the writer gives a novel interpretation of the international events (at least to me. :P ). The facts presented are sufficiently harsh thereby necessitating the buffering presence of humor which is used with perfection in this work. There is an assay which is almost on the verge of being a story. Not that I'm claiming falseness of the content but the writing style gave me a glimpse of GodOfSmallThings's beauty. Loved the book and the author !

Bush was still about when I read this. An off-shore view of "Mericanism", and a literate, insightful one at that. I felt ashamed at the end of it, but, amazingly, never lectured. In the end, it feels like truth - and what are you going to do about it? One extra star for avoiding the "huge problem engenders hopelessness" trap. Read in conjunction with Rebecca Solnit's Hope.