Customer Reviews

War Talk

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Arundhati Roy's "War Talk" is written with an unique blend of passion and moral clarity. By sympathizing with the struggles of the lower and middle classes against their increasing exploitation by the powerful, the book serves as a bottom-up indictment of violent global capitalism. Ms. Roy suggests that war is merely the most extreme manifestation of an elitist capitalist system that is sustained by subsuming all available land, labor and resources to its own ends. The result is a scathing and compelling critique of capitalism and politics as practiced in both the U.S. and her native India.

Ms. Roy initially made her mark as a novelist, and her gift for prose is turned to very good use here. In an era when the corporate media routinely treats moral issues in an ambiguous manner, the author's convictions seem to be almost revelatory. For example, when discussing the standoff between India and Pakistan over the contentious issue of Kashmir, she writes, "Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?" Why, indeed?

While Ms. Roy minces no words about the growth of fascism in India, she credits President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair with creating "a congenial international atmosphere" for fascism to take root. This is a world where the U.S. uses its military might to support its multinational corporate empire. Destroying countries that harbor terrorists is only its most obvious and visible form. Ms. Roy believes that it is the mistreatment of the poor by the powerful -- e.g., the lack of respect for human rights; the privatization of public resources; the monopolization of "free" speech by media corporations; and so on -- that ultimately defines the empire and, conversely, the struggle that must ensue to confront and supplant it.

I give this book the highest possible rating and highly recommend it to anyone who might be struggling to understand the increasingly violent world we are inhabiting.

Arundhati Roy has again taken aim at globalization and the injustice she sees inherent in the world today. She provides the type of information that doesn't come close to making the nightly news in America. From war to economic integration, Roy tackles the sacred cows in America with no remorse.

My main complaint about "War Talk" is that the book is a collection of material that has been already been published. Among the six essays, no new writing was done for this work (aside from some editing and minor additions). Most of this material is available in other works or on the Internet, and anyone who has read some of Roy's material online will likely be disappointed to see much of it replicated here. The best piece in the collection is an essay that was written as an introduction to Noam Chomsky's book "For Reasons of State." Because they were not written as a single work, these essays overlap each other quite a bit. They also overlap with some of the essays in Roy's previous book, "Power Politics." If you've read that book, this collection will add little new insight.

However, these criticisms do not diminish the power of Roy's writing. She pulls no punches, and she is scathing in her attacks. Her message is clear: corporate globalization is imperialism, America is an empire, and there is nothing free about free markets, free speech, or free press. She addresses issues ranging from the abuses of the ruling BJP in India against Muslims to the non-accountability of the WTO, IMF and World Bank. The final essay "Confronting Empire" is a call for revolution, and it outlines the prescription for affecting change.

"War Talk" provides a rehash of the commentary that we have come to expect from Arundhati Roy. It also provides a rehash of her passion, and that makes this book worth reading.

War Talk is the most recent book of essays by author Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things). In this volume Roy continues to take on India's Big Dam project (a subject in her previous two volumes of essays), as well as violence world wide. She does not spare her native India anything and takes on the War Against Terror and the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy. It is always a pleasure to ready Roy's work. She gives out a viewpoint of a citizen from another country and brings a new voice to the table. She condemns how Americans are presented information and understands that it is difficult to get truly factual from the press (any press). She also praises Noam Chomsky for his work in revealing some of the lies that are fed to Americans by the United States government. I am not informed enough to know anything about the accuracy of her statements regarding U.S. policy, but Roy has a viewpoint that should be considered. I feel that the biggest value in Roy's essays comes in revealing information about Indian politics and Indian life. I know very little about India, and Roy is a valuable source of information and makes me want to learn more about this ancient (yet young) nation.

As Americans being exposed to the recycled garbage churned by local media every day we surely are not accustomed to listening to the bitter reality of politics around us and that too explained so beautifully.

This is a wonderful book.

The essays cover an enormous range of subjects, from politics in India to the rapid rise of the US to Empireship.

Two things are most refreshing: First, Roy's clear-eyed ridicule of US self-importance and self-mythologizing. Second, her unwavering contention that all war is essentially a war of the rich against the poor.

She is biting and humorous and absolutely indignant at the misinformation and disinformation people in the US are fed to justify the US corporate takeover of the world--with the aid and support of almost every government, bought and bribed and stolen.

Contrary to one of the detractors writing here, Arundhati Roy's voice is heard far too little in this country. Unlike the right-wing, war-loving bigots (among whose number we can count the aspiring dictator George Bush), Roy nails the facts to deliver a series of damning critiques.

Roy's essays are not only a passionate rejection of sugar coated rationalizations for war, genocide, Imperialism, and ecological destruction - she is empirical, concise, and honest on issues every one of us should be aware of, from the equation of dissent to treason, to the hypocritical involvement of various governments in terroristic acts, to the pathetic media indulgence and promotion of government lies.

Her comparisons of George Bush, Jr. to Saddam Hussein are bold and frighteningly accurate. She warns us that "...The American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America."

Roy's words are scary, and therefore motivational. She reminds us that our citizenship is separate from the State and any of its corruptions. Power is ultimately the peoples'. This is a guide to waking up to our power and using it.

First, my petty quibbles. The pages of the book are of a modest size, covering 5 essays in double spaced text. Out of 142 pages, 30 are devoted to bibliography, notes and a slim glossary. Then, about 10 pages are consumed by verbatim quotations from Chomsky. Out of the remaining 100 or so pages, some passages (such as Gujarat massacres) are reproduced across 2 or 3 essays in their entirety. If you finally take into account a bit of superfluous linguistic liberty that Ms. Roy frequently allows herself (for e.g., a healthy dollop of questions posed in an attempt to make the text evocative) this really could have been ONE longish essay instead of a book.

Ok. That said, assuming the size and the price are irrelevant to you, there is no doubt you'll find Roy in absolutely top form -- very eloquent and a vitriolic but well supported take on ethnic-oriented acts of violence in our world, regardless of whatever facile labels are put on it ("terrorism" or its risible counterpart "war on terrorism").

The first two essays address a lot of what is wrong with "modern" communally sensitive India. This includes a graphic exploration of the recent Gujarat violence and how religious fascists are ruining the secular fabric of the country. It is very useful for someone not in India to get this shameful chronology of events as they happened and how politicians like Modi and Bal Thackerey still wallow in pride over their self-indulgent shenanigans.

Gradually, her cannon points to a bigger adversary -- the US. We are taken around Vietnam, Guatemala, Coasta Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico, Colombia. Clearly, Chomsky has been a big inspiration for the author and we are subjected to frequent Chomsky moments. But apart from the quirks of America's conflicting presidential regimes + CIA, discussions about corporate globalizations are also thrown in for good measure.

All in all, it is a fast-paced, provocative, summary read about many issues facing our world, particularly involving two of the countries that Ms. Roy seems to have attachments to -- India and US. But for someone who reads Chomsky himself, and follows Indian events through TOI or HT, this may not necessarily be required reading -- unless you relish Roy's literary acumen (as I do).

Hope this helps you decide whether this book needs be bought and owned. As for reading it, I would HIGHLY recommend it in a blink.

This is a collection of six essays on the impact and ideology of international war at the start of the new century. The first three are reprinted from magazines in India. The fourth and sixth are transcripts of talks she gave in New Mexico and Brazil. The fifth is her introduction to the reprint of Noam Chomsky's book, For Reasons of State.

Arundhati Roy is outraged by the development of casual militarization that has increased over the last decade. In her own backyard, she watches as the government of India unveils its nuclear weapons program, pretending that this will lead to peace with its neighbors. She notes the deepening violence and poverty in India and asks why her government's priorities are upside down.

This leads to her assessment of US policy, which shows the same pattern. Speaking in Brazil at the close of the World Social Forum in 2003, she links the power of US corporations to the creeping fascism of the Indian government. She describes the way they have joined forces to exploit new markets in poor countries. War Talk serves as a useful introduction to the current state of the world. Using the footnotes, you can explore other sources. Arundhati Roy's anger is palpable, and her experience as an activist outside the Western world gives her readers a valuable new perspective.

"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.