The short (4 minute) film below illustrates the hypocrisy and horror of US interventions over the world, and this book gives the detail of them. Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum (Zed Books, £8.99) William Blums book, Killing Hope, provides a comprehensive, thoroughly researched and meticulously referenced account of US interventionism over the past century. Detailing the activities of the US security forces over the course of 75 years and in more than 50 countries - from Italy to Nicaragua, from Angola to Korea, from Grenada to Syria - Blum demonstrates clearly that the US is not the force of freedom and democracy that it claims to be. The policeman of the world is in fact a rogue state that will stop at nothing to protect its economic, political and military dominance. The book highlights the fanatical McCarthyite anti-communism that has underpinned US foreign policy during this period. Framing communists as the quintessential bad guys - psychotic, evil, world-dominating, cat-stroking villains who detest freedom and democracy - the US and its allies have been able to justify their horrific campaign of violent subversion against the countries of the socialist and non-aligned world. In the context of the current patriotic hysteria surrounding the WWI centenary, its worth remembering that it was Britains national hero, Winston Churchill, who led the charge against the fledgling socialist world, proposing to strangle at birth the Bolshevik state. Blum makes the important point that in the context of a wide-ranging campaign of hostility from the West, including invasion, bombing, infiltration, espionage, funding and arming terrorist groups, spreading disinformation, round-the-clock media propaganda, the socialist countries were forced to develop an extensive security apparatus. This same security apparatus was then used to provide proof of communisms repressive and anti-democratic nature. As Blum notes: We in the West are never allowed to forget the political shortcomings (real and bogus) of the Soviet Union. At the same time we are never reminded of the history which lies behind it. Of course, a government does not need to be communist to qualify as a target for CIA-sponsored regime change. Its enough simply to have friendly relations with socialist countries, or to have communist inspired ideas such as land reform, public ownership and political independence. Guatemalas Jacobo Arbenz and Irans Mohammad Mossadegh could not reasonably be called communists - they were progressive nationalists who aimed to improve the lives of the poor, while having friendly relations with both West and East. This was too much for the CIA, which engineered successful coups against both of them, ushering in periods of vicious and exploitative rule in both countries. As the consummate cold warrior John Foster Dulles put it: For us there are two sorts of people in the world: there are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others. Sadly, Killing Hope is not the story of a bygone era. It is an account of the historical epoch we are still living in. The techniques of intervention, destabilisation, demonisation, disinformation and terrorism are all employed as extensively today as they ever were, most prominently in the Middle East. As such, Blums book is an essential tool for understanding the world we live in today. (Morning Star)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:00:37 +0000
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