Proutist Universal

Economic Exploitation

2007-10-09T06:21:29Z

"According to PROUT, economic exploitation involves the unrestricted plunder of the physical and psychic labour of a particular community together with the natural resources in their local area. In PROUT’s view, exploitation is not confined to only economic exploitation, but includes psychic and spiritual exploitation as well. The final and most dangerous form of economic exploitation is fascist exploitation. In order to canvass national support to justify their exploitation, the imperialists popularize the theory of nationalism. They portray their exploitation as rational and constitutional and based on the national interest. The British imperialists, in order to legitimize their exploitation, embraced nationalist theory. Following the example of the British, Mussolini of Italy and Hitler of Germany moved along the same path.

When communist imperialism was established after the Second World War, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin propagated the concept of the Slavic supremacy. Likewise, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong built up Chinese superiority. As soon as an imperialist power is transformed into a fascist power, it spreads out its tentacles to psychically and culturally oppress a vanquished people. To perpetuate unhindered economic exploitation, psychic exploitation starts almost simultaneously. Where psychic exploitation is used to further economic exploitation, it is called “psycho-economic exploitation”.

At the very outset, the fascist exploiters select a weak community which inhabits a region rich in natural resources. The fascists socially and culturally uproot the victimized community by imposing a foreign language and culture on them. Because the local people cannot easily express their individual and collective feelings and sentiments in a foreign language, they develop a defeatist psychology and inferiority complex with respect to the exploiters. This defeatist psychology destroys the natural spiritedness and will to fight of the local people, and the fascists skillfully utilize this golden opportunity.

The primary interest of the fascist exploiters is to gradually suck the vitality of the local community so that they can pillage and plunder their natural resources, but if necessary they will even obliterate the local community from the face of the earth." ~ Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar

Indigenous Journalists Seek Identity

2007-10-09T05:07:56Z

"We already have collaboration with Sami broadcasting, Maori broadcasting (from New Zealand) and the Aboriginal Peoples TV Network, in Canada"

By Marty Logan

ALTA, Norway (IPS) - Just weeks after giving up her post, the former president of the parliament of Norway's indigenous Sami people has lambasted Sami journalists for shoving aside their culture in the rush to get a 'scoop'.

Aili Keskitalo told an international conference organised by Sami media organisations that reporters had "violated" personal limits during her tenure, including when she was hospitalised with a brain stroke and when it was rumoured that she was pregnant. "This leads me to the question: is this Sami journalism or a bad copy (of mainstream journalism)," asked the former president, who delivered the critique with a smile as keynote speaker at the opening of the conference 'Same Voice, But Different' in northern Norway, Sami territory.

"My experience is that Sami media want to publish the most juicy and dramatic details, maybe to impress the Norwegian media," added Keskitalo, who was speaking to about 40 indigenous journalists from around the world in Alta, a town of 20,000 people above the Arctic Circle. She resigned as the first Sami woman president, after serving just two years of a four-year term, reportedly because of protracted disputes with her vice-president.

The Sami, Europe's only indigenous people, are native to what are now Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia. Best known as reindeer herders, about half of today's Sami population of 80,000 lives in Norway. ... Full story

Peru: New Census to Make Indigenous Peoples' Rights Count

2007-10-09T04:35:27Z

By Milagros Salazar

LIMA (IPS) - The Peruvian state will repay a longstanding debt to indigenous people in the country’s Amazon region by including them in a national census in a way that pays attention to their particular social, economic and cultural characteristics. But experts say this is only a first step.

On Oct. 21, interviewers from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) will arrive in 2,200 indigenous communities in the Amazon region, armed with census forms bearing 37 questions that will put these people back on the country’s data map.

This detailed survey will be carried out in 11 of the 25 administrative regions into which the country is divided: Amazonas, Cusco, Junín, Madre de Dios, Ucayali, Pasco, Huanuco, Loreto, San Martín, Cajamarca and Ayacucho.

Since Peru’s independence in 1821, 10 national censuses have been carried out, but only once, in 1993, was specific information gathered about ethnic and multicultural aspects of the population, even though international guidelines require it. ... Full story

Israel Seems Determined to Dig its own Grave

2007-10-09T04:25:41Z

"To most independent observers it seems plain that Israel's cruel, aggressive and expansionist policies have resulted in a steady deterioration in its strategic environment."

by Patrick Seale, Al-Hayat

What would it take to persuade Israel to rethink its attitude towards its Arab neighbours - and primarily towards the Palestinians? The Hamas victory in Gaza is surely a clear signal that an Israeli change of direction is urgently needed.

All Israel`s efforts to break the democratically-elected Hamas government have failed. Its policies of boycott, siege and starvation, of bombing and shelling, of extra-judicial murder, of withholding tax revenues, of the systematic destruction of Palestinian institutions have served only to create a time-bomb of hunger, despair and defiance on Israel's flank.

Yet Israel appears to have learned nothing. Instead of seeking peace with the Arabs - instead of seizing their outstretched hand - it persists in rejecting all peace overtures, preferring to rely on force and still more force, and on its ability to manipulate its American ally. ... Full story

Africa: Brain Drain Still Bleeding Ex-Colonies Dry

2007-10-09T04:15:50Z

By Mario de Queiroz

LISBON (IPS) - The violence, corruption and generalised poverty marring more than three decades of independence in Portugal's five former colonies in Africa, and five years of independence in East Timor, have been the main obstacles for development in these countries, but not the only ones.

Brain drain is another phantom that is slowly but inexorably destroying hopes for progress and wellbeing for the people of Guinea-Bissau, which became independent in 1974, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, which became independent in 1975, and East Timor, independent since 2002.

Skilled and academically qualified people from African countries where Portuguese is an official language often give up their status in their unstable home countries to build a new life in peaceful Portugal, even if it means sacrificing their former careers and having to take up a hastily learned, lower skilled job.

In contrast, many of those who earn a degree in universities in Portugal, thanks to scholarships offered to young people in the six former Portuguese colonies by the Portuguese Institute for Development Support (IPAD), and return to their countries of origin find jobs in the professional sector. ... Full story

Ecuador: Correa Wins Majority in Constituent Assembly

2007-10-09T03:59:58Z

"We believe the economy should be based on human beings," and that capital, investment, the profit motive and the workings of the state should be subordinate to human beings."

By Kintto Lucas

QUITO (IPS) - The landslide victory for Ecuador's governing Movimiento Alianza País in the election for a constituent assembly to rewrite the Ecuadorean constitution has cleared the way for the foundations to be laid for a "solidarity economy."

Alberto Acosta, a 58-year-old economist with strong ties to the country's environmental and indigenous movements, was the candidate who garnered the greatest number of votes on Sunday [Sept. 30], which means he is likely to preside over the constituent assembly when it begins its work in November.

In an interview with IPS, he stressed the need for the new constitution to establish the framework of an economy based on solidarity, and argued that the "neoliberal" free-market model followed by previous governments must be dismantled. ... Full story

Burma: UN Emergency Session to Study Crisis

2007-10-02T04:40:50Z

By Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA (IPS) - The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session next week to discuss the bloody crackdown on protests by the military regime in Burma, which has left an unspecified number of Buddhist monks and other demonstrators dead and injured this week and hundreds under arrest.

The decision by the highest U.N. human rights body was the finishing touch to its three-week ordinary session, which was largely dedicated to procedural matters.

It is not clear how many protesters were killed this week in Burma, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets, led by Buddhist monks. Some media outlets have reported 13 or 14 deaths, but diplomats in Rangoon have warned that the death toll may be much higher, and activists speak of up to 200 victims of the security forces.

In Burma, which has been ruled by successive military regimes since a 1962 coup, a wave of protests broke out in mid-August, triggered by a 500 percent hike in oil prices. The demonstrations are the biggest since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was crushed with brutal force, with some 3,000 civilians killed by the army. ... Full story

Britain: Our Ancestors' Kitchen

2007-10-01T11:34:37Z

Researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff have discovered ancient British recipes dating back 8000 years. Among the foods popular in Neolithic times are roast hedgehog, nettle pudding and fish-gut sauce. The oldest recorded of the foods is nettle pudding, which involved blending nettle leaves with barley flour, salt and water before they were added to stews as a form of dumpling.

]]> Other food includes barley bread, which dates from about 5000BC and smoky stew, from 3000BC - this was a mixture of bacon, smoked fish, milk and cream.

Ancient peoples also developed the forerunner to food such as haggis and sausages, by stuffing a mixture of meat into an intestine. Fruit cakes came along in the Norman period.

The Welsh connection with the leek can be traced back to around 4000BC, as the Welsh people found them easier to grow in the poor soil than onions were.

The diet of ancient Britons was believed to be healthier than the modern diet, as the people ate a lot of meat, leaves and berries, and the longer time taken to prepare and cook food meant that people did not overeat, so there were not the problems associated with obesity that there are with today's junk-fuelled diet.

Source: http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=1712

World War II: Was Stalin to blame?

2007-10-01T11:28:04Z

By Tom Segev

Mischa Shauli sat at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., completely beside himself. It had been years since the first time he heard about the existence of a document said to prove that Stalin, not Hitler, bore the main responsibility for World War II, and for years he had searched for it with all his skills as a professional detective. Shauli's last position was as Commander Shauli, Representative of the Israel Police in Russia. Previous to that he had been head of the police fraud investigation unit for the Southern District.

A few years ago Shauli read "Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War," by Bogdan Rozen. Rozen, who now lives in England, wrote it under the pseudonym of Viktor Suvorov. Shauli, impressed by the book, translated it into Hebrew and saw to its publication here.

From out of the sea of details, a coherent thesis emerges: Stalin dragged Hitler into war to force Europe into chaos and facilitate a communist revolution on the continent. According to Shauli, there is evidence to back up this theory, including a speech by Stalin himself as well as a report obtained by the U.S. Consulate in Prague. The report has been mentioned here and there over the years, but it has never been published, because no one knows where it is today. ... Full story

Latin America: Native Leaders Half-Heartedly Embrace 'Historic' Declaration

2007-10-01T10:49:27Z

By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY (IPS) - While governments and the representatives of international agencies celebrated the approval of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples after more than two decades of negotiations, some native leaders and experts in Latin America were less enthusiastic.

In their criticism of the document, indigenous leaders Manuel Castro of Ecuador and Luis Andrade of Colombia, as well as the former director of the Inter-American Indigenous Institute, José del Val, pointed out to IPS that it is non-binding, and that parts of it were negotiated with little participation by the representatives of its presumptive beneficiaries.

A slightly different stance was taken by the spokesman for the Rigoberto Menchú Foundation, Elmer Erazo, who said the Declaration could be considered a stride forward "to the extent that indigenous people make use of it."

But, he told IPS, "it's nothing to jump up and down about."

The Declaration was adopted Thursday by majority vote in the United Nations General Assembly. Only four countries -- the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- voted against it, while Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, Samoa and Ukraine abstained.

The 12-page Declaration states that indigenous peoples have the right "to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs".

It also says native peoples have the right to maintain their cultures and to not be displaced from their land, and urges states to indemnify them when their land or resources are used or damaged without their consent. .... Full story

1857 mutiny revisited : India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...'

2007-10-01T10:37:25Z

Author says British reprisals involved the killing of 10m, spread over 10 years By Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi, Friday August 24, 2007 The Guardian The battle of Cawnpore - the entire British garrison died at Cawnpore (now Kanpur), either in the battle or later massacred with women and children. Their deaths became a war cry for the British. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them.
In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India. ... Full Story

Japan still honors dissenting war-crimes judge

2007-10-01T09:25:41Z

By Norimitsu Onishi, Friday, August 31, 2007 (Courtesy : International Herald Tribune)

TOKYO: An Indian judge remembered by fewer and fewer of his own countrymen 40 years after his death is still big in Japan.

In recent weeks alone, NHK, the public broadcaster, has devoted 55 minutes of prime time to his life, and a scholar came out with a 309-page book exploring his thinking and its impact on Japan. Capping it all, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during a recent visit to India, paid tribute to him in a speech to the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and then traveled to Calcutta to meet the judge's 81-year-old son.

]]> A monument to the judge - erected two years ago at the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan's war dead and a rallying point for Japanese nationalists - provides a clue to his identity: Radhabinod Pal, the only one out of 11 Allied justices who handed down a not-guilty verdict for Japan's top wartime leaders at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or the Tokyo trials.

"Justice Pal is highly respected even today by many Japanese for the noble spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East," Abe told the Indian Parliament.

Many of postwar Japan's nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Pal as a hero, seizing on - and often distorting - his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation. As nationalist politicians like Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan's wartime history, Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials.

Abe, who has cast doubt on the validity of the Tokyo trials in the past, avoided elaborating on his views in the Indian Parliament or during his 20-minute meeting with Pal's son, Prasanta. But the meeting's subtext was not lost on some Japanese newspapers, which warned that it would hardly help repair Japan's poor image among its neighbors.

After the war, conventional war crimes by the Japanese, categorized as Class B and Class C, were handled in local trials throughout Asia.

Twenty-five top leaders were charged with Class A crimes - of waging aggressive wars and committing crimes against peace and humanity, categories created by the Allies after the war - and tried in Tokyo by justices from 11 countries.

It was not clear why the British and U.S. authorities selected Pal, who had served in Calcutta's high court and strongly sympathized with the anticolonial struggle in India. As an Asian nationalist, he saw things very differently from the other judges.

In colonizing parts of Asia, Japan had merely aped the Western powers, he said. He rejected the charges of crimes against peace and humanity as ex post facto laws and wrote in a long dissent that they were a "sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge." While he fully acknowledged Japan's war atrocities - including the Nanjing massacre - he said they were covered in the Class B and C trials.

"I would hold that each and every one of the accused must be found not guilty of each and every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted of all those charges," Pal wrote of the 25 Japanese defendants, who were found guilty by the rest of the justices.

Pal also described the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States as the worst atrocities of the war, comparable with Nazi crimes.

The U.S. occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after Tokyo signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and accepted the verdict of the Tokyo trials. But the end of the occupation also lifted a ban on the publication of Pal's 1,235-page dissent, which Japanese nationalists brandished and began using as the basis of their argument that the Tokyo trials were a sham.

Takeshi Nakajima, an associate professor at the Hokkaido University Public Policy School whose book "Judge Pal" was published in July, said that Japanese critics of the trials selectively chose passages from his dissent.

"Pal was very hard on Japan, though he of course spoke very severely of the United States," Nakajima said. "All imperialist powers were part of the same gang to him. His attitude was consistent."

Casting subtleties aside, postwar politicians invited Pal to Japan several times and showered him with honors.

One of his strongest backers was Nobusuke Kishi, a prime minister in the late 1950s who had been a Class A war criminal suspect but was never charged. Kishi is Abe's grandfather and political role model.

"For us, we were extremely grateful for Judge Pal's presence - there was no other foreigner who said so clearly that Japan wasn't the only country that had done wrong," said Hideaki Kase, chairman of the Japan-India Goodwill Association, an organization founded in part because of Pal's legacy.

But Kase, who once served as an adviser to Yasuhiro Nakasone, another former prime minister, said that he disagreed with certain parts of Pal's conclusions, including his acknowledgment of the Nanjing massacre. Describing the massacre as a "complete lie," Kase said that Pal had fallen victim to "Chinese and Allied propaganda."

In many ways, Pal seemed to share the mixed feelings that many Indian anticolonialists had of Japan. As an Asian nation competing with the Western powers, Japan inspired admiration, but also consternation for its colonization of Asia, said Sugata Bose, a historian of South Asia at Harvard.

Bose said his great-uncle, Subhash Chandra Bose, the Indian independence movement leader, criticized Japan's invasion of China but allied himself with Japan against the British.

"It is a complex view from South and Southeast Asia," Bose said.

"There is some degree of gratitude for the help that the Japanese provided, to the extent that such help was provided. At the same time, there was also grave suspicion of Japan."

Still, Subhash Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, a popular armed force formed by Indian anticolonialists, accepted assistance from Japan.

"Judge Pal, as an Indian, would have known all about this," Bose said. "And it may have indirectly influenced his views."

Uganda: Coffee Producers Are the Biggest Losers

2007-10-01T09:15:35Z

Editor's note: African poverty is deep and persistent. One thing that is urgently needed to escape this, as the article below suggests, is the export of finished products, not raw materials, a policy advocated by Proutist Universal. Government officials in Uganda would do well to fund projects that aim at establishing this kind of value-added industry. Otherwise, wealthy nations will continue to grow wealthier at African expense.

By Alexis Okeowo

KAMPALA (IPS) - Coffee producers in Uganda suffer from an unfair trade relationship with Europe, even though their beans produce some of the best quality coffee in the world, says the Ugandan coffee industry's governing body.

''The biggest loser is the person directly involved in coffee bean production," says Henry Ngabirano, director of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. Moreover, Ugandan producers get an "unequal share of the revenue generated by coffee beans".

Combined, Ugandan growers and exporters receive 6 percent of the finished product's price, according to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. "This shows what level of exploitation there is," Ngabirano says. ... Full story

Kolkata Prout Convention Attended by more than 500

2007-09-12T23:26:36Z

By Santanu Roy, People's News Agency (P.N.A.), Kolkata September 11, 2007
Online Videos by Veoh.com [Dr. Ravi Batra, well known economics professor of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas (USA) and author of New York Times best-selling books, has recorded a short video message on the occasion of the PROUT CONVENTION held at Mahanayak Uttam Mancha, Kolkata on 9th September 2007, in which he expresses the urgent need for a Prout revolution to end corruption all over the world. He points out how corruption is the key cause of world poverty, and documents his thesis with clear data and analysis.]

A Prout Convention was organised at 'Mahanayak Uttam Mancha', Kolkata on the 9th of September, 2007, by Proutist Universal (PU), Kolkata. Various eminent speakers spoke on different aspects of the socio-economic philosophy of Progressive Utilisation Theory (Prout), propounded by the great philosopher Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. Three sessions were held during the convention apart from the inaugural session. The first session was on the 'Agricultural and Rural Development Policies of Prout'. The second session was on the 'Industrial and Economic Policies of Prout', and the final session was on 'Prout and Sadvipra Samaj'. During the lunch and breaks informative posters displaying the policy stances of Prout were displayed.

More than 500 people attended the Convention, which was convened by Ac. Tanmayananda Avt. on behalf of Proutist Universal.

]]> The program was inaugurated by Professor Purabi Roy, former Oriental Professor, University of St. Petersberg, Russia; Professor Aditya K. Mohanti, Professor of Philosophy at Utkal University; Dr. Biswajit Bhowmik, Assistant Regional Director of IGNOU, Siliguri; Shrii Kalishankar Banerjee, former chairperson of All India Gramin Bank; Ac. Dhyaneshananda Avt, Secretary General of Proutist Universal; Avta. Ananda Diipta Ac., Central Secretary, Girls' Proutists; and Ac. Amulya Ratan Sarangi, a veteran Proutist. Ac. Sarangi introduced the underlying principles of Prout to the delegates.

The first session on the 'Agricultural and Rural Development Policies of Prout' was chaired by Professor Purabi Roy. Ac. Satyashivananda Avt. began by elaborating on the rural development programm of Prout, followed by Ác. Trayambakeshvaránanda Avt., who discussed the agricultural policies of Prout.

Shrii Kalishnkar Banerjee then spoke about the vital necessity of taking Prout economic concepts to the masses. He insisted that rather than holding conventions and seminars, the need of the hour is to move among the common masses to spread the ideology of Prout. The session concluded with the words of the chairperson, Professor Purabi Roy, who is well known for her seminal research work on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. She declared: "The concepts that time and again got expressed in the life and works of Subhash Chandra Bose, those very concepts, it seems, have been more expressly and more clearly brought to life by Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. My heartfelt appeal to you: take these concepts of Prout and move forward with them, as only then will we be able to remove the crisis in leadership that has been created in our times."

The second session on the 'Industrial and Economic Policies of Prout' was chaired by Dr. Pranab Chattopadhyay, retired Professor of Economics, University of Kalyani. Ac. Dhyaneshananda Avt. first spoke on the industrial policies of Prout, followed by Avt. Ananda Sumita Ac., who talked on the concept of economic independence for all women, which is a core value in Prout. The main attraction of this session was a video speech of the renowned Dr. Ravi Batra, Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA. In his speech he highlighted the cause of poverty in the United States and around the world as being corruption at the highest levels of power. He predicted that in response to the current unprecedented levels of governmental corruption, a political revolution would take place in the United States by the end of this decade, which would end the rule of money. He further gave a clarion call to join the revolution that is bound start all over the world to establish the concept of economic democracy. Finally, Professor Pranab Chattopadhyay in his speech illuminated the industrial aspects of Prout in relation to the existing industrial structure.

In the third and final session, Professor Aditya Mohanty spoke on Shrii Prabhat Sarkár's philosophy of Neohumanism in the context of developing societal leaders. Session chairman Dr. Biswajit Bhowmik emphasised the need to spread the ideas of Prout in all spheres of life, since every aspect of life is related to and inseparable from Prout.

The singing group "Anandam" performed Prabhata Samgiita, composed by Shrii P. R. Sarkar, at the beginning of the Convention and at the start of all sessions. The program likewise concluded with the singing of Prabháta Sam'giita.

At the end of the final session the convener of the Convention expressed his thanks to all the organisers, the speakers and the auditorium management. A souvenir was published by the Prout Convention Committee to commemorate the occasion.

Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog' Points American Jews to a Universalist Ethos

2007-09-12T23:17:10Z

"The evidence the authors marshal is so compelling that it leaves me, as a progressive Jew, weeping with distress over what the fervid particularist imagination of rightwing Jews has done to my country."

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

Review by Philip Weiss

Everyone in my community (opponents of the Iraq war who seek a more balanced American policy toward the Palestinians) has only one question about Walt and Mearsheimer's forthcoming book: Will it be ignored? For instance, James Morris, who I believe I once saw explode in the audience at an American Enterprise Institute program on Israel's secure borders (led by Richard Perle and Dore Gold), has been sending out emails about his efforts to get the book covered by '60 Minutes' [a prominent American television news program - eds.]. No dice.

I am a cockeyed optimist; I don't think it will be ignored. I don't think it can be. One fear we've have is that the LRB [London Review of Books - eds.] paper was such a tremendous sensation that the big media, having only grudgingly covered that, would now say, Oh well this is just an expansion of the paper; old news. One mainstream editor said as much to me a few weeks back in shooting down a proposal I made for an article about Stephen Walt's Jewish milieu (more about that later...). "Oh I think that moment is over," the editor said. Class dismissed.

I no longer fear as much. Making my way slowly to the end of the actual book (it's a dense read, esp. for someone who cares deeply about every issue they raise), I don't think anyone can argue that the book recapitulates the paper. The book expands the paper by a factor of 4 in pure numbers of words, and the book's tone is more exalted than the paper's. The authors are less tentative, and less emotional, qualities I remember in the original. The manner of the book is amazingly calm. The arguments are more solid, and go much further. As for solidity, I am simply awed by the field of reference. W&M have read every comment ever made by an Israeli official about U.S. policy, they have found every neoconservative crackpot comment about remaking the Middle East. ... Full review