great book

good read, needed to be a bit more in depth, but it was information, i knew not much about

This will make you think and then you'll get mad. Don't read it. It's excellent.

Brilliant writing, quite the wordsmithing. Deeply disturbing trends.
"Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and/or ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this:We be many and they be a few. They need us more than we need them."

Brave and fascinating.

Ms. Roy's essays are always clear-eyed and impassioned. I was moved to tears by several of the essays - the last in particular gave some hope - but how much has happened since then!

From the first essay, "War Talk"
"The threshold of horror has been ratcheted up so high that nothing short of genocide or the prospect of nuclear war merits mention.... The underlying principle of the War Against Terror, the very notion that war is an acceptable solution to terrorism, has ensured that terrorists in the subcontinent now have the power to trigger a nuclear war."

From "Democracy"
"It is amazing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails with fascism....
On the issue of nationalism, it's wise to proceed with caution. Can we not find it in ourselves to belong to an ancient civilization instead of to just a recent nation? To love a land instead of just patrolling a territory?"

"Under the circumstances, it's futile to go on blaming politicians and demanding from them a morality for which they're incapable... There's something pitiable about a people that constantly bemoans its leaders."

I honestly wish I had read this book as a teenager in the anti-war movement. Her discussion of how the notion of being "anti-american" is constructed really hit home for me as someone who struggled to describe their massive discontent with U.S imperialism and empire. Yet, even though the essays in this book are located in the Bush jr era of U.S empire, I find they are a timely and necessary read as it seems U.S society is collapsing in on itself, and in the wake of election season.

Highly recommended for all of us who need a reminder, if not a primer, on the currents of power, large scale violence, and national arrogance that buffet nations and people. As an Indian Arundhati, her perspective is both interesting and insightful, and her conclusions are both sound and disturbing.

I'm not entirely sure this counts as a book - I read it in about an hour, it's only 100 double-spaced wide-set pages long and is a series of 5 or 6 articles that have been published elsewhere. That being said, it was still a devastating read. I left that hour more depressed than I entered it. Roy calls out the forces of corporate globalization and nationalism that undermine real democracy and manipulate a shell of it instead. They need the appearance of legitimacy from a free press, justice system, open elections, so they let those exist and exploit them behind the scenes to their own ends. I think she's right, and I think the short essay thrown in to assure activists that there's a glimmer of hope is not quite enough to overcome the whole "Well. Shit." feeling the rest of the book cultivated.

Happy Saturday morning!

This lady has so much passion, she makes me feel inspired and shameful all at once. her writing gets the blood pumping. damn our crappy newspapers! they never give the news any respect.

Very good. Quite a change from God of Small Things. This is what Roy does best, i.e. activist work. When she's passionate about something, it really comes through.