UP Professor Walden Bello is interviewed by the New Left Review. Chalmers Johnson on the Japanese Looting of Asia during World War II. War historian John Keegan writing for Time magazine on the American G.I.

The Illiberal Naipaul?
A profile on the illiberal Nobel Prize laureate VS Naipaul on the Atlantic Monthly. I have read his A Bend in the River (gorgeous title) some months ago, and I was like what was the fuss all about. I don't really feel much enthusiasm for the book, but I can understand why people like Naipaull: he offers a totally alien perspective on the post-colonial experience of the Third World. Naipaul is after all a double-exile, from India and the Caribbean, and now residing in Britain. The protagonist in this particular novel feels that independence was much worse than colonialism. He felt more secure protected by the colonial interests, before African natives got it on their heads that they could be just like the Europeans. I did not really like the book ( I think Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was better), but still worth reading if only for its unique political perspective.