Killing Hope: Us Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

"The greatest purveyor of violence on Earth is my own government." Martin Luther King Jr. This is still true in 2006. Killing Hope has nothing to do with wacko conspiracy theories. It's history. Untold, untaught history--but fact, not fiction. "Read the history of the place where you're living/and stop letting corporate news teach lies to your children." Immortal Technique This book is an encyclopedia of the terrorism, assassinations, and covert wars the US government has committed around the world since WWII. Other reviewers will undoubtedly deny this books factuality. In fact, Mr. Blum. a former CIA station chief, fought an extensive legal battle with the CIA over his right to publish it. The court's decision was to allow publishing, but that the proceeds of all sales would be given to the CIA! So, as Mr. Blum says, don't buy this book, borrow it from a friend or a library. WHY DOES THE REST OF THE WORLD HATE US (except for the world's wealthy elite)? This book helps dispell the myths of "islamic fascism," "anti-americanism," and other lies that perport to explain those that oppose the US government and the corporations it serves. Unlike what you hear on FOX News, those who oppose US global dominance DO have good reasons. Usually it's because our government tortures and murders their families. What HOPE is the US Govt. and the world's wealthy elite trying to KILL? The threat of a good example alternative to unbridled capitalism (iow nothing in life has value unless a dollar amount can be attached to it). Ever wondered what Washington has against poor, unthreatening Cuba? Or why the US supports brutal dictatorships around the world (Columbia, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan etc.), and opposes genuine democracies (Venezuela, France). Or how about why Americans have been taught to oppose universal health care, or free university education (hint, these ideas make people more important than profit). For those who claim to be history buffs, I challenge you to read this. You don't know squat about modern history unless you understand the episodes described in this book. Read this to understand why the population of the US must learn to think for themselves, before "our" government destroys the world for profit. Make no mistake, the survival of humanity, and certainly our prospects for peace and happiness depend upon the American public not continuing down the road first trod by the "good Germans."

This has got to be the definitive book on US foreign policy since WWII. Blum goes through how the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking, producing pornography, providing handbooks, materials & encouragement for torture, how the military did chemical & biological tests on the general public, etc. It's all written in a ridiculous amount of detail, mainly citing sources that use internal government documents, or the writings of people in the 3rd world who got bombed nonstop. & yes, at times the author uses sarcasm & black humor, which greatly helps with readability, since the reading could easily become very heavy without it. Here's my favourite quotation, from the end of the Vietnam chapter: "The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films, documentaries, television series... played and replayed in every Western language; there have been museaums, memorial sculptures, photo expositions, remembrance ceremonies... Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?" (p.133) & another, re: Operation Desert Storm: "Tanks pulling plows moved alongside trenches, firing into the Iraqi soldiers inside the trenches as the plows covered them with great mounds of sand. Thousands were buried dead, wounded, or alive." (p.334) I had read about that elsewhere but wondered if it were actually true. The sources are the LA Times and Washington Post. It occurred on Feb 24-25, 1991. Anyway the whole book is jam-packed with such quotations. Every chapter is really like a book within a book there is so much information.

It's a dense and heavily footnoted book, but turns out to be exceedingly readable. Pick any chapter at random and one can sit down for a smart 15-minute history lesson. I find Blum's book superior to others in the same field such as Chomsky. Blum throws in small doses of sarcasm and black humor even. He is merciless and sharp... I'm sure some would call it "slanted." However, considering the facts (or purported facts), one can see why the author is so relentless. Blum is fighting a tide of Americans growing less and less conscious of history, and this history, which has strongly shaped our present culture and political climate, was always propagandized, obscured, or swept under the rug as it unfolded. It is a subject of the highest importance, and Blum handles it admirably. Buy copies for your friends and enemies.

This is an unbelievably-well-documented expose of American Foregin Policy over the last 50 years. Although his style leaves much to be wanting, Blum's book is filled to the brim with facts that are never discussed by traditional political analysts. Rarely does one catch a glimpse of the underbelly of America Foreign Policy, and that is exactly what Blum here provides. Some reviewers have said that he is a biased Leftist spouting agitprop, or that he is pushing an ideological agenda, but frankly I just didn't see this. If pedaling truth is an ideological activity, then I suppose they are right. The fact is, Blum is a master of weeding through and exposing the lies and propaganda of American policy makers. This is not "disinformation" (as one reviewer put it) but pure, documented facts - and lots of them. Blum comes off as an author who has committed himself to finding and providing the public straight, unvarnished truth - a very difficult project when one considers the extent of government, military and media obfuscation. Although Blum's tone can be distainful and even downright angry at times, it is nonetheless justified. As you will see in the book, the United States government has done some terrible things - things that would drive any genuine patriot to righteous indignation. Blum's findings might be difficult for the average American to swallow, but then the truth is like that sometimes. Open your mouth and open your mind. This book is food for rational thought. A timely, much needed expose of an imperialist military that has completely slipped away from public control.

In this book, former CIA employee William Blum, more or less analyzes the efforts of the CIA and U.S. government to maintain the status quo in the third world after World Two. He notes in his introductions, that the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917 was regard hysterically by Western elites who immediatley invaded Russia, usuccessfully trying to overthrow the Bolsheviks, while their organs of opinion, exposed in the 1921 Walter Lipmann-Charles Merz study, such as the New York Times reported all sorts of wild stories about Bolesheviks eating Children and making all women property of the state, and reported every unsubstantiated rumor every day that the Bolsheviks were about to be defeated. The Boleshevik revolution, as anathema as it was to genuine populism to say the least, was the first major example of an alternative to the capitalist/colonial world system and was feared by Western elites for that reason.After World War two, the United States emerged as the supreme power of the world and its only rival was the Soviet Union, which had gobbled up East Europe whose markets had traditionally been dominated by the Western powers. In Italy, Greece, Indochina and elsewhere Communists had gained great popular support, independent of any aid from the Soviet Union, for their opposition to fascism and the old colonial order or status quo. In Italy, the United States almost single handedly engineered the defeat of the very popular Communists in the 1948 election and in Greece they set up a terror and torture regime composed of many Nazi collaborators, and set up a similar regime in South Vietnam to destroy the 1954 Geneva accords. Throughout this book, there are dozens of instances of CIA and U.S. government operations designed to subvert even the most mildly social democratic governments or engaged in activities like funding innumerable newspapers and labor unions to help subvert the target country. There is the overthrow of the liberal democratic capitalist regime in Guatemala in 1954 after it tried to decrease the power of the United Fruit corporation in their country and permitted civil liberties to communists and finally after years of being denied it from the U.S. or any other source imported a small boatload of arms from the communist block at which point the maniac John Foster Dulles declared that the communists were establishing a beachead in Cetral America designed to overtake the helpless United States , since which Guatemala has turned into a hell on earth, with a series of U.S. backed tin-pot Hitlers. There is the story of the U.S. engaging in the assasination of at least 20,000 South Vietnamese in "Operation Phoenix" or using such instruments of "interrogation" as the Tiger cage and the water board, after which the many victims began to make the trials and tribulation that our heroic B-52 flyers who were shot down and taken captive by the wicked North Vietnamese who didn't think too kindly of all th