Middle Nation Book Discussion: Killing Hope by William Blum

This is the book Killing Hope, US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War two, updated edition by William Blum. I think this book originally came out in the nineteen eighties, and then there's been subsequent new editions coming out. This particular edition is from 2012, which I assume is the newest edition, although it will be about, it will have twelve years of military interventions and chicanery on the part of The US that is not included. I don't know what's gonna happen when William Blum dies. Someone has to take over updating this book, updating this record of US malicious actions around the world because obviously they're not stopping.

SubhanAllah, when you I'm I'm just going through the the table of contents, you know, scrolling down so that I can get to where I need to read. And this is a a catalog of crimes that just seems endless, and yet it's also 12 as I say, a dozen years of crimes have not been included in this edition. Right. Okay. Introduction begins with excerpts from the introduction from the 1987 edition.

This man has been writing about this since 1987. I think that he used to work with the CIA, if I'm not mistaken. I think William Blum used to be with the CIA. A brief history of the Cold War and anti communism, so called anti communism. He begins with a quote from Michael Perenti who I think is a communist historian or Marxist historian in the in The US.

Parenti says, our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anticommunism already has. This seems a kind of a strange way to frame it since anticommunism was only just a way of packaging imperialism, but there you have it. Okay. It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner, you were our heroes after the war. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was, quote, to be as rich and as wise as an American.

So what happened? Well, they say never meet your your heroes. When they come off of the silver screen and come into your home, it's a bit different. An American might have been an American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, by an Indonesian, or a Cuban during the ten years previous or by a Uruguayan or a Chilean or a Greek in the decks in the decades subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility achieved enjoyed by The United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention.

The opportunity to build the war ravaged world anew to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity, and justice collapsed under the awful weight of anticommunism. Again, anticommunism, just Western imperialism, how they packaged it. The weight had been accumulating for some time, indeed, since day one of the Russian revolution. Okay. This seems peculiarly interested in the communist aspect here and anti communist aspect here.

I'm not sure if William Blum is a communist, but it seems to be leaning that way. I don't remember it being having that particular tone when I read it the first time decades ago. By the 1918, 13,000 American troops could be found in the newly born state, the future Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to, quote, strangle at its birth the Bolshevik state as Winston Churchill put it. The young Churchill was Great Britain's minister for war and air during the minister for air.

How are you minister for air? Alright. I assume that means air war and war by means of the air or or through the air. Okay. Anyway, sorry.

The young Churchill was was Great Britain Great Britain's minister for war and air during this period. Increasingly, it was he who predicted or sorry, who directed the invasion of the Soviet Union by the allies, Great Britain, The US, France, Japan, and several other nations on the side of the counter revolutionary, quote, unquote, white army. Years later, Churchill, the historian, was to record his views of this singular affair for posterity. This is a quote from Churchill now. Were they, the allies, at war with Soviet Russia?

Certainly not. But they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet government. They blockaded its ports and sunk its battleships.

They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall. But war shocking. Interference shame. It was they repeated a matter of indifference to them how Russians settled their internal affairs. They were impartial.

Bang. I mean, you know, you're this is Churchill talking years later about their own hypocrisy. And and in a in a in a in a way as if it's, you know, in a very flippant manner. That, yes, we we we lied about what we were doing. We were trying to destroy Soviet Russia, but we lied about it continuously.

Isn't that funny? See, this is why you read you when you read the history, then you when you you can see them doing the same thing today. And years and years from now, maybe an Anthony Blinken will look back on it and say, well, yeah, we knew there was a genocide. That's how they are. What was there about the Bolshevik revolution that so alarmed the most powerful nations in the world?

What drove them to invade a land whose soldiers had recently fought alongside them for over three years and suffered more casualties than any other country on either side of the World War. Well, the the Bolsheviks had had the audacity to make a separate peace with Germany in order to take leave of a war that they regarded as imperialist and not in any way their war and to try and rebuild a terribly weary and devastated Russia. But the Bolsheviks had displayed the far greater audacity of overthrowing a capitalist feudalist system, and proclaiming the first socialist state in the history of the world. This was, uppettiness writ incredibly large. This was the crime the allies had to punish, the virus which had to be eradicated lest it spread to their own people.

Now there's a valid argument there with regards to the rejection of capitalism in in this particular how can I say this? I think that it has less to do with a rejection of capitalism as it has to do with an assertion of sovereignty and actual control over your own affairs. And it's not the it's not the communism or the so called so called communism, the so called socialism that they objected to as much as it was the fact that it it locked them out of whatever Russia or or the Soviet Union might have had to offer. That's my commentary. The invasion did not achieve its immediate purpose, but its consequences were nonetheless profound and persist to the present day.

Professor d f Fleming, the Vander Vanderbilt University historian of the Cold War has noted, for the American people, the cosmic tragedy of the interventions in Russia does not exist or it was an unimportant incident long forgotten. But for the Soviet people and their leaders, the period was a time of endless killing, of looting, of plague and famine, of measureless suffering for the scores of millions, an experience burned into the very soul of a nation and not to be forgotten for many generations if ever. Also for many years, the harsh Soviet regimentations could also be justified by fear that the capitalist powers would be back to finish the job. It's not it it is not strange that in his address in New York, September 1959, press premier Khrushchev should remind us of of the interventions, quote, the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution as he put it. So that that that's also this is now on breaking off into my own commentary.

This is an important thing for people to remember today. And for America, this is this is another sign of what we've talked about many times, which is how the American people are disconnected from the reality and from the the reality of the consequences overseas of their actions overseas. They really don't understand the impact that their policies have on people around the world and we're seeing that compounding and compounding and compounding after the decades, over the decades to where people are increasingly sick to death of The United States. And meanwhile, the American people themselves are completely oblivious about that fact. They really don't know how they're perceived internationally because they don't they don't even understand the impact of their own policies and their own violence and savagery on these countries, on countries all around the world.

Whereas those countries have suffered the consequences of American policies, of American military interventions, and so forth. So it's burned, as it says here, burned into their very souls. But the American people don't even they're not even aware of what they themselves have done, what their government has done, and what the ramifications of that are with regards to the way everyone around the world sees them. Okay. Continuing.

In what could be taken as a portent of superpower insensitivity, A 1920 Pentagon report on the intervention, this is the intervention in Russia, reads, this expedition affords one affords one of the finest examples in history of honorable, unselfish dealings under very difficult circumstances to be helpful to a people struggling to achieve new liberty. Well, doesn't that just sound like America and Bangladesh or anywhere else? It sounds just like what they would say about Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else that they invaded that no one asked them to come. It's unselfish of us to invade your home. Okay.

Continuing. History does not tell us what a Soviet Union allowed to develop in, quote, unquote, normal ways in a, quote, unquote, normal way of its own choosing would look like today. That's valid. We do know, however, that the nature of the Soviet Union attacked in its cradle, raised alone in an extremely hostile world, and when it managed to survive to adulthood, overrun by the Nazi war machine with the blessings of the Western powers. We know what that looked like.

The resulting insecurities and fears have inevitably led to deformities of character not unlike that found in an individual raised in a similarly life threatening manner. I hope that was clear, although I didn't read it very well. It's saying that we don't know what the Soviet Union would have looked like if it had been allowed to grow and develop without Western interference, but we know how it has developed since as a result of or influence under the influence of Western interference, which ultimately was not a particularly healthy society. We in the West are never allowed to forget the political shortcomings, real or real and bogus of the Soviet Union. At the same time, we are never reminded of the history which lies behind it.

The anticommunist propaganda campaign began even earlier than the military intervention. Before the year 1918 was over, expressions in the vein of, quote, unquote, red peril, the Bolshevik assault on civilization, and, quote, a menace to the world by reds is seen, had become commonplace in the pages of the New York Times. So as far back as you go, the the New York Times was just an instrument of state propaganda, still is today. During February 1919, a US senate judiciary subcommittee held hearings. This is 1919.

A US senate judiciary subcommittee held hearings before which many, quote, unquote, Bolshevik horror stories were presented. The character of some of the testimony can be gauged by the headline in the usually sedate times of 12/1919. This is a headline. Describe horrors under red rule. R e Simmons and w w Welsh tell senators of brutalities of Bolsheviks Bolsheviki, strip women in the streets.

People of every class except the scum are subjected to violence by mobs. That's interesting. People of every class except the scum. The Times is referring to scum as a as a as an official class within society, and only the scum have not been subjected to violence by the mobs. In other words, only people like you and I, people who read the times.

Historian Frederick Lewis Schuman has written, quote, the net result of these hearings was to picture Soviet Russia as a kind of bedlam inhabited by abject slaves completely at the mercy of an organization of homicidal maniacs whose purpose was to destroy all traces of civilization and carry the nation back to barbarism. Kinda like how the Muslims wanna return the whole world back to the sixth century. Literally no story about the Bolsheviks was too contrived, too bizarre, too grotesque, or too perverted to be printed and widely believed. From women being nationalized women being nationalized to babies being eaten. That's one that always comes up by the way, eating babies in this propaganda what in their propaganda about their enemies.

The early pagans believed the Christians guilty of devouring their children, the same was believed of the Jews in the Middle Ages and then they sent the same thing about the so called Bolsheviks. I'm surprised they haven't said that about us yet. The story about women with all the lurid connotations of state property, compulsory marriage, so on, free love, etcetera, was broadcasted over the country through thousands of channels, wrote Sherman, and perhaps did more than anything to stamp the Russian communists in the minds of most American citizens as criminal perverts. Although, in fact, the the Russian aristocracy was documented to be quite bizarre in their in their, shall shall we say, relationships and proclivities. Anyway, this tale continued to receive great currency even after the State Department was obliged to announce that it was a fraud.

That the Soviets eat their babies was still being taught by the John Birch Society to its large audience at least as late as 1978, So some fifty years, sixty years later. By the end of 1919, when the defeat of the allies and the so called white army appeared likely, the New York Times treated its readers to headlines and stories such as the following. 12/30/1919, reds seek war with America. 01/09/1920, official quarters describes the Bolsheviks menace in the Middle East as ominous. 01/11/1920, allied officials and diplomats envisage a possible invasion of Europe.

This doesn't this sound familiar? Doesn't this sound familiar with regards to what they're saying right now about Russia? 01/13/1920, allied diplomatic circles fear an invasion of Persia. And, yeah, 01/16/1920, a page one headline, eight columns wide, Britain facing war with reds. Call council calls council in Paris.

Well informed diplomats. Expect both a military invasion of Europe and a Soviet advance into eastern and south Southern Asia. The following morning, however, we could read, quote, no war with Russia. Allies to trade with her Allies allies will trade with Russia. So yesterday, they're about to invade everybody.

Today, forget about it. We're not gonna it's not gonna be war. We'll trade with them. Kinda like how they're still using Russian oil and Russian gas in Europe. Even though they said that they're not.

02/07/1920, Reds raising army to attack India. 02/11/1920, fear that Bolsheviks will now invade Japanese territory where they're going everywhere. They're about to attack everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, in that that's in 1920. Meanwhile, just fifteen years later, your problem is in Germany and you've been ignoring it.

Readers of the New York Times were asked to believe that all these invasions were to come from a nation that was shattered as few nations in history have been, a nation still recovering from a horrendous world war in extreme chaos from a fundamental social revolution that was barely off the ground, engaged in a brutal civil war against forces backed by the major powers of the world, its industries never advanced to begin with in a shambles, and the country was in the throes of a famine that was that was that was to leave many millions dead before it subsided. So in other words, he's telling you what the what the real situation was in Russia at that time and therefore how ludicrous it was to pretend that Russia even had the power to to carry out all of these aggressions that they were alleging Russia was planning on doing. In 1920, the New Republic magazine, which still exists today and is just as bad now as it was then, in 1920, the New Republic magazine presented a lengthy analysis of the news coverage by the New York Times of the Russian revolution and the intervention. Amongst much else, it observed that in the two years following the November, the Times had stated no less than 91 times that, quote, the Soviets were nearing their ropes end or actually had reached it.

If this was if this was reality as presented by The United States, the the the un The United States newspaper of record, that's the New York Times, that's referred to as the newspaper of record. If this is the reality that was presented by the New York Times, one can only imagine, with dismay, the witches brew that the rest of the nation's newspapers were feeding their readers. This then was the American people's first experience of a new social phenomenon that had come upon the world, their introductory education about the Soviet Union and this thing called, quote, unquote, communism. The students have never, recovered from that lesson, neither has the Soviet Union. The military adventure intervention came to an end, but with the sole and partial exception of the Second World War period, the propaganda offensive.

The war itself came to an end. The intervention came to an end, but the propaganda offensive has never let up. In 1943, Life magazine devoted an entire issue in honor of the Soviet Union's accomplishments going far beyond what was demanded by the need for wartime solidarity, going so far as to call Lennon, quote, perhaps the greatest man of modern times. So that's when you needed them for the second world war, then you completely reversed and flipped your propaganda and started praising them. Two years later, however, with Harry Truman sitting in the White House, such fraternity had no chance of surviving Truman.

After all, Truman was the man who, the day after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union said, if we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia. And if Russia is winning, then we ought to help Germany. And that way, let them kill as many as possible. Although, I don't wanna see Hitler's yeah. I don't wanna see Hitler victorious in any circumstances.

So you see how the that was a thinking of Truman. If Germany is winning, then we'll help Russia. And if Russia is winning, then we'll help Germany. The main thing that we wanna do is to just see them killing each other. And believe me, that's the same way that they feel right now.

Much propaganda mileage has been squeezed out of the Soviet German treaty of 1939 made made possible only by entirely ignoring the fact that the Russians were forced into the pact by the repeated refusal of the Western powers, particularly The United States and Great Britain to unite with Moscow in a stand against Hitler. As they like as they like likewise refused to come to the aid of the socialist oriented Spanish government under siege by the German, Italian, and Spanish fascists beginning in 1936. Stalin realized that if the West wouldn't save Spain, they certainly wouldn't save the Soviet Union. From the Red Scare of the nineteen twenties to the McCarthyism of the nineteen fifties to the Reagan crusade against the so called evil empire of the nineteen eighties, the American people have been subjected to a relentless anti communist indoctrination. It is imbibed with their mother's milk.

Pictures in their comic books spelled out in their school books, their daily paper offers them headlines that tell them all they need to know. Ministers find some find sermons in it. Politicians are elected with it, and Reader's Digest becomes rich on it. In other words, this so called anti communist propaganda and indoctrination by The US, which again, as I said at the beginning, is actually nothing but a way of packaging or a way of covering up and a way of rationalizing and excusing American imperialism. It actually doesn't have much to do with communism and certainly hasn't much to do with the Soviet Union.

The now this again, this may not be the view of the author who may or may not be himself a communist or Marxist, I really don't know, but the the the way this is being told is it is as if communism is really a thing and was really the the the anti communism was really what was the the the incentive and what was motivating the Americans when actually it had very little to do with that. It had only to do with American hegemony. The fiercely held the fiercely held conviction inevitably produced by this insidious assault upon the intellect is that a great damnation has been unleashed upon the world possibly by the devil himself, but in the form of people, people not motivated by the same needs, fears, emotions, and personal morality that governs others of the species, but people engaged in an extremely clever monolithic international conspiracy dedicated to taking over the world and enslaving it for reasons not always clear perhaps, but evil needs no motivation save evil itself. Well, that's quite a sermon that he just preached there. Nevertheless, it does seem to be true.

And there he's basically saying what I just said, is that this was just a cover. The communism, anti communism paradigm was just a way of covering up their own actual imperial ambitions. Moreover, any appearance appearance or claim by these people to be rational human beings seeking a better kind of world or society is a sham, a cover up to delude others and proof only of their cleverness. The repression and cruelties which have taken place in the Soviet Union are forever proof of the bankrupt bankruptcy of virtue and the evil intentions of these people in whichever country they may be found under whatever name they may call themselves. And most important of all, the only choice open to anyone in The United States is between the American way of life and the Soviet way of life, that nothing lies between or beyond these two ways of making of making the world.

This is how it looks to the simple folk of America. One finds that the sophisticated, when probed slightly beneath the surface of their academic language, see it exactly the same way. So in other words, he's saying that everybody thinks this way in America, simple people and academics, but academics anyway tend to be more brainwashed and more indoctrinated than so called uneducated people in my opinion. To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in The United States, the truths of anticommunism are self evident, as self evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind, as the Russian people believed that the victims of Stalin's purges were truly guilty of treason. The foregoing slice of American history must be taken into account if one is to make sense of the vagaries of American foreign policy since the end of World War two, specifically, the record as presented in this book of what the US military and the CIA and other branches of the US government have done to the peoples of the world.

In 1918, the barons of American capital needed no reason for their war against communism other than the threat to their wealth and their privilege, although their opposition was expressed in terms of moral indignation. And, again, that's the same thing that they do today. During the period between the two world wars, US gunboat diplomacy operated in the Caribbean to make, quote, the American lake safe for the fortunes of United Fruit and the W. R. Grayson Company, at the same time taking care to warn of the Bolshevik threat to all that is decent from the likes of Nicaraguan rebel, Augusto Sandino.

By the end of the second world war, every American past the age of 40 had been subjected to some twenty five years of anti communist radiation. The average incubation period needed to produce a malignancy. Anticommunism, so called, had developed a life of its own independent of its capitalist father. Increasingly, in the postwar period, middle aged Washington policymakers and diplomats saw the world out there as one composed of, quote, communists and anticommunists, whether of nations, movements, or individuals. This comic strip vision of the world with righteous American supermen fighting against communism communist evil everywhere had graduated from a cynical propaganda exercise to a moral imperative of US foreign policy.

I think that's that's well said. Even the concept of and and that that touches upon something that we've talked about before, which is that when you begin to propagandize your population, you yourself may know that what you're doing is propaganda, but what inevitably happens is that you raise a whole generation of people on propaganda who then believe that propaganda, and then they start to operate in the world. Once they inherit the reigns of power, they operate in the world as if that propaganda is true. So generation by generation, you are creating people who end up having positions of power and authority who are increasingly disconnected from reality. They're informed about reality exclusively by propaganda.

So they are by by generation after generation, they are more and more disconnected from the world and how the world actually operates. Okay. Even the concept of non communist implying some measure of neutrality has generally, been accorded scant legitimacy in this paradigm. John Foster Dulles, one of the major act architects of postwar US foreign policy, expressed expressed this succinctly in his typically simple moralistic way. Quote, 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. As several of the case studies in the present book confirm, Dulles put that creed into rigid practice. The word communist as well as Marxist has been so overused and so abused by American leaders and by the media as to render it virtually meaningless. The left has done the same with the word fascist, by the way, he said. This is the author, not me, but I agree.

But merely there's so many words actually. Fascist, oligarchy, and in fact genocide is a word that is overused to the point that it loses meaning. The way you could say that, you know, that in in Bangladesh there's a genocide going on because they kill protesters. No. That's not how it works.

These words do have actual meanings and you should be familiar with them so that you use the words correctly if you have any respect for the severity of what those words actually implies. But merely having a name for something, witches or flying saucers, attaches a certain credence to it. This is going back to the book. At the same time, the American public, as we have seen, has been soundly conditioned to react in a Pavlovian way to the term communism or anti communism. It means still the worst excesses of Stalin.

Communism means the worst excesses of Stalin. This is what you find also anytime Jordan Peterson talks about Soviet Russia or talks about communism or even socialism. He even says it's socialism. Socialism is responsible for all of the crimes of Stalin. From wholesale purges in Siberian slave labor camps is what it means.

As Michael Perenti has has observed that, quote, the classic Marxist Leninist predictions concerning world revolution are treated as statements of intent directing all present day communists to actions or all present day communist actions. It means us against them. In other words, because if you're if you're I'm not particularly familiar to be honest with Marxism and Leninism. I haven't read much. I never read Marx.

I've read about these things and I'm familiar with the fact that they think that a worldwide revolution is an inevitability. A socialist or Marxist or communist revolution is an inevitability, but there's not necessarily the belief that that's something that you're supposed to pursue. It's something that they thought that Marx thought was gonna happen naturally, but when they talk about it, he's saying in the West, when they talk about it, they act like it was that it was their intention, that it was something that they wanted to accomplish by aggression and by action. But let's be honest, there are a lot who who have felt that way and who have in fact tried to achieve it by means of violence and aggression. Okay.

Continuing with the book. And quote them, unquote, can mean a peasant in The Philippines when we're talking about us versus them. Them can mean a peasant in The Philippines, a mural painter in Nicaragua, a legally elected prime minister in British Guyana, or a European intellectual, or a Cambodian, neutralist, or an African nationalist, all somehow a part of the same monolithic conspiracy, each in some way a threat to the American way of life. No land too small, too poor, or too far away to pose such a threat, the communist threat. In other words, what he's saying here, although he he may elaborate on it and and articulate it more further down, this is something that that I've also talked about before, at least I think in some of the book discussions or some of the the other discussions, which is that they attach the word communist to people who aren't really even communist, people who are just pro their own people.

They they may be, as he said, an African nationalist. They may be an intellectual or even neutral. But because of the way John Faustabella said, you're either exactly what we are or you are something else, and that something else is the word that we will always use for that something else is just communist. The cases presented in this book illustrate that it had has been largely irrelevant whether the particular targets of intervention, be they individuals, political parties, movements, or governments call themselves communist or not. That doesn't matter.

It has mattered little whether they were scholars of dialectical materialism or had never heard of Karl Marx, whether they were atheists or priests, whether a strong and influential communist party was in the picture or not, whether the government had come into being through violent revolution or peaceful elections, all have been targets. All have been communist in the American mentality and the American rationale for their imperialist aggression. It has mattered still less that the Soviet KGB was in the picture. The assertion has been frequently voiced that the CIA carries out its dirty tricks largely in reaction to operations of the KGB, which have been even dirtier. This is the allegation.

This is a the the the author talking. This is a lie made out of whole cloth. There may be an isolated incident of such in the course of the CAE's life, but it has kept itself well hidden. The relationship between the two sinister agencies is marked by fraternization and respect for fellow professionals more than by hand to hand combat. Former CIA officer John Stockwell has written, actually this is a quote.

Actually, at least in more routine operations, CIA officers case officers fear the US ambassador fear the US ambassador's staff. They fear restrictive headquarters, cables, curious gossipy neighbors in the local community. They fear all of those as potential threats to their operation. Next, after all of those potential threats to their operation, they see the local police as a threat to their operation, then the media, the press, and last of all on their list of potential threats to their operations is the KGB. In my twelve years of case officering, I never saw or heard of a situation in which the KGB attacked or obstructed a CIA operation.

Stockwell, adds that the various intelligence agencies do not want their, world to be complicated by murdering each other. It isn't done, he says. This is a quote by Stockwell, who was a former CIA officer. It isn't done. If a CIA case officer has a flat tire in the dark night on a lonely road, he will not hesitate to accept a ride from officer.

Likely, the two would detour to some bar for a drink together. In fact, CIA and KGB officers entertain each other frequently in their homes. The CIA file the CIA's files are full of mention of such relationships in almost every African station. Proponents of, quote, unquote, fighting fire with fire come perilously close at times to arguing that if the KGB, for example, had a hand in the overthrow of a Czechoslovak government in 1968, it is okay for the CIA to have a hand in the overthrow of a Chilean government in 1973. It's as if the destruction of democracy by the KGB deposits funds in a bank account from which the CIA is then justified in making withdrawals.

That's a clever way of putting it. What then has been the the thread common to be diverse targets of American intervention which has brought down upon them the wrath and often the firepower of the world's most powerful nation. In virtually every case involving the third world, so called third world, described in this book, it has been in one form or another a policy of self determination, The desire born of perceived need and principle to pursue a path of development independent of US foreign policy objectives. Most commonly, this has been manifested in a, the ambition to free themselves from economic and political subservience to The United States, or b, the refusal to minimize relations with the socialist block or suppress the left at home or welcome an American military installation on their soil, in short, to ref any refusal to be a pawn in the Cold War, or option c, the attempt to alter or replace a government which held to neither of these aspirations, I e a government supported by The United States. In other words, again, it's just any form of self determination, any any any sort of independence, sovereignty, exactly what what our goals in Middle Nation are to promote economic sovereignty and political independence.

Any country that is following or pursuing those objectives in the in the days of the Cold War, the those kind those kinds of countries were deemed to be communist and therefore needed to be maliciously dealt with, aggressively dealt with. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, going back to the book, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that such a policy of independence has been viewed and expressed by numerous third world leaders, so called third world leaders, and revolutionaries as one not to be equated by is not to be equated by definition to anti Americanism or pro communism, but as simply a determination to maintain a position of neutrality and nonalignment vis a vis the two superpowers. Time and time again, however, it will be seen that The United States was not prepared to live with this proposition. Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah in Ghana, Jagan in British Guyana, Sihanouk of Cambodia, all insisted uncle Sam insisted, all of those must declare themselves unequivocally on the side of, quote, the free world or suffer the consequences. Kwame Nkrumah put the case for nonalignment as follows.

The experiment which we tried in Ghana was essentially one of developing the country in cooperation with the world as a whole. Nonalignment meant exactly what it said. We were not hostile to the countries of the socialist world in the way in which the governments of the old colonial territories were. It should be remembered that while Britain pursued at home coexistence with the Soviet Union, this was never allowed to extend to British colonial territories. Books on socialism, which were published and circulated freely in Britain, were banned in British colonial empire in the British colonial empire.

And after Ghana became independent, it was assumed abroad that it would continue to follow the same restrictive ideological approach. When we behaved as did the British in their in their relations with the socialist countries, we were accused of being pro Russian and of introducing the most dangerous ideas into Africa. You see the hypocrisy? Britain was dealing with Russia. Britain had had relations with Russia, but if Ghana, when it became independent from Britain, if they were to have relations with Russia, then they were accused of being pro Russian and of being pro communist and aligning themselves with them.

You're not allowed to to to not align with the West and not be subserving to the West even if you're so called independent. It's reminiscent of the nineteenth century American South where many southerners were deeply offended that so many of their black slaves had deserted to the northern side in the civil war. They had genuinely thought that the blacks should have been grateful for all their white masters, for everything that their white masters had done for them, and that they were happy and content with their love. They really believed that. The noted Louisiana surgeon and psychologist, doctor Samuel Cartwright, argued that many of the slaves suffered from a form of mental illness which he called drape tox mania, diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery.

They were they they in subhanallah. They actually had a doctor saying that it was some kind of a psychological condition, some kind of a disorder psychologically to try to escape from slavery. In the second half of the twentieth century, the this illness, this so called illness in the third world has usually been called communism. Perhaps the most deeply ingrained reflex of knee jerk anticommunism is the belief that the Soviet Union or Cuba or Vietnam, etcetera act are are are acting as Moscow's surrogates is a clandestine force lurking behind the facade of self determination, stirring up the hydra of revolution or just plain trouble here, there, and everywhere. Yet another car yet another incarnation, although on a far grander scale of the proverbial outside agitator, he who, made his appearance regularly throughout history.

King George blamed the French for inciting the American colonies to revolt, Disillusioned American farmers and veterans protesting their onerous economic circumstances after the revolution, Shays' rebellion, were branded as British agents out to wreck the new republic. Labor strikes in the late nineteenth century in late nineteenth century America, labor strikes were blamed on anarchists and foreigners. During the First World War on German agents, after the war after the war on Bolsheviks. In other words, labor strikes in the late nineteenth century were blamed on anarchists and foreigners. And then during the First World War, labor strikes were blamed on German agents.

Then after the war, it was blamed on Bolsheviks. It was it was never the fact that workers were oppressed. They never had reason. They'd they always had to be agitated. And in the nineteen sixties, said the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, j Edgar Hoover, was the head of the FBI, founded the FBI, helped to spread the view among the police ranks that any kind of mass protest is due to a conspiracy promulgated by agitators, often communists, who misdirect otherwise contented people.

The last is the key phrase, one which encapsulates the conspiracy mentality of those in power. The idea that no people except those living under the enemy could be so miserable and so discontent as to need recourse to revolution or even mass protest. That's only the agitation of an outsider which misdirects them along this path. They they do the same thing until now. They do the same thing until now.

Everything is the the the the Russians are behind it. The now the Iranians are behind it. For example, even the the assassination attempt on Trump. That was that was Iran. Right?

That was the Russians. That was something. Nobody would ever just just do anything like that in in American society. Everyone's happy. Accordingly, if Ronald Reagan were to concede that the masses of El Salvador have every good reason to rise up against their god awful existence, it would bring into question his accusation and the rationale for US intervention that it is principally only the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Nicaraguan allies who instigate the Salvadorians.

That seemingly magical power of communists that seemingly magical power of communists everywhere who, with a twist of their red wrist, can transform peaceful happy people into furious gorillas. The CIA knows how difficult a feat that is. The agency, as we shall see, tried to spark mass revolt in China, mass revolt in Cuba and in The Soviet Union, in Albania, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe with a singular lack of success. The agency's scribes, they've gotten better at it, by the way, in terms of regime change and fake revolution and rebellion, they've gotten better at it. The agency's scribes have laid the blame for their failures on the, quote, unquote, closed nature of the societies involved.

But in noncommunist countries, the CIA has had to resort to military coups or extralegal chicanery to get its people into power. It has never been able to light the fire of popular revolution. The CIA has never been able to light the fire of popular revolution. I think that's probably still true to a certain extent, but what they are able to do is is is light the fire, light a fake fire that is convincing as a popular revolution which gives them the opportunity to exploit that image of a popular revolution for them to not to to engineer regime change in the behind the facade that they've created of a popular revolution. Now back to the book.

For Washington to concede merit and virtue to a particular third world insurgency would moreover raise the question, why does not The United States, if it must intervene, take the side of the rebels? Not only might this better serve the cause of human rights and justice, but it would shut out the Russians from their alleged role. What better way to frustrate the international communist conspiracy? But this is a question that dares not speak its name in the Oval Office, a question that is relevant to many of the cases in this book. You see their point?

They're saying that the communists are behind revolutions here, there, and everywhere, but why didn't America just take the side of the people and appropriate those so called people's movements? They were actually they they're they're alleging that those people's movements were actually being engineered by the communist. Well, why didn't the the Americans just come in and get on the side of the people instead of always being on the other side? I mean, you could ask that question right now because America for for example with the Houthis in Yemen, you've got all of your fleet over there, you've got the sixth fleet over there, you've got the the navy over there, and you're over there to try to stop the Houthis. Well, you should you should be doing their job.

The the American fleet should be the one that's putting an embargo and a blockade on Israel. You should be putting a no fly zone over Israel, and you should be doing what the Houthis are doing rather than trying to stop the Houthis from doing what they're doing. Instead, The United States remains committed to its all too familiar policy of establishing and or supporting the most vile tyrannies in the world whose outrage is against their own people confront us daily in the pages of our newspapers, brutal massacres, systematic sophisticated torture, public whippings, soldiers, and police firing into crowds. The this is happening even in the Europe now. Government supported death squads, tens of thousands of disappeared persons, extreme economic deprivation, a way of life that is virtually a monopoly held by America's allies from Guatemala, Chile, and El Salvador to Turkey back in the time that this was written, Pakistan, and Indonesia, again, back at the time when this was written, all members in good standing of the so called holy war against communism, all members of the so called free world, that region of which we hear so much but see so little.