Great writers, since ancient times have delivered disturbing truths to the ears of the powerful. That tradition continues to the present. Harold Pinter of Britain may be the most eminent living playwright in the English-speaking world today. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech he said, "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law." Pinter's speech, widely covered in Europe and around the world, was barely reported on in the United States.

Arundhati Roy is the celebrated author of The God of Small Things and winner of the prestigious Booker Prize. The New York Times calls her, "India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence." Her latest books are The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile, with David Barsamian, and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.