If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century...

[Orwellian_Ghost]

If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out ...

invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing
governments ... suppressing movements
for social change ... assassinating
political leaders ... perverting
elections ... manipulating labor unions ...
manufacturing "news" ... death squads ...
torture ... biological warfare ...
depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ...
mercenaries ...

It's not a pretty picture.
It is enough to give imperialism a bad name.

Read the full details in:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II.

by William Blum



http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm

[baldguy]

1. We send our children to foreign countries to kill and to be killed

for the sole benefit of a few corporate oligarchs.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Guatemala 1953-1954- While the world watched

The centerpiece of Arbenz's program was land reform. The need for it was clearly expressed in the all-too-familiar underdeveloped-country statistics: In a nation overwhelmingly rural, 2.2 percent of the landowners owned 70 percent of the arable land; the annual per capita income of agricultural workers was $87. Before the revolution of 1944, which overthrew the Ubico dictatorship, "farm laborers had been roped together by the Army for delivery to the low-land farms where they were kept in debt slavery by the landowners."

The expropriation of large tracts of uncultivated acreage which was distributed to approximately 100,000 landless peasants, the improvement in union rights for the workers, and other social reforms, were the reasons Arbenz had won the support of Communists and other leftists, which was no more than to be expected. When Arbenz was criticized for accepting Communist support, he challenged his critics to prove their good faith by backing his reforms themselves. They failed to do so, thus revealing where the basis of their criticism lay.

*****

The first plan to topple Arbenz was a CIA operation approved by President Truman in 1952, but at the eleventh hour, Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded Truman to abort it. However, soon after Eisenhower became president in January 1953, the plan was resurrected. Both administrations were pressured by executives of United Fruit Company -- much of the vast and uncultivated land in Guatemala had been expropriated by the Arbenz government as part of the land reform program. The company wanted nearly $16 million for the and, the government was offering $525,000, United Fruit's own declared valuation for tax purposes.

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The terror carried out by Castillo Armas was only the beginning. It was ... to get much worse in time. It has continued with hardly a pause for 40 years.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Guatemala_KH.html

[stillcool]

3. awesome writer...

that I never tire of reading...my very favorite quotation of his..on my very favorite reading site....

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/American_Empire_KH2004.html
The American Empire: 1992 to present
from the book
Killing Hope
by William Blum
2004 edition

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that is the way the empire grows-a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after world War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty ears after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002. Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations then it has been throughout history."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Authors/Authors_page.html

William Blum page

The Bloody Road to Empire
An interview with William Blum
by David Ross
Arcata, California
William Blum quit his job at the State Department in 1967 because of his opposition to the U.S. governmentís war in Vietnam. He became a freelance journalist and author exposing U.S. malfeasance around the world, culminating in his all encompassing and extensively documented book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II. Noam Chomsky, reportedly the most quoted scholar in the world, lauded Killing Hope. The first edition, he wrote, was far and away the best book on the topic. Blum's latest book, Rouge State: A Guide to the Worlds Only Superpower, further exposes the dirty underbelly of the U.S. Empire. Both books are must read material.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Bloody_Road_Empire.html

[scarletwoman]

4. The thing is, nothing will change until our Empire ends. Imperialism has always been a bipartisan

project. There is no limit to the number of human deaths that the Imperialists consider "worth it", when it comes to the pursuit of power and wealth.

sw

[scarletwoman]

5. k&r (nt)

[Orwellian_Ghost]

6. Iran 1953- Making it safe for the King of Kings

"So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh," announced John Foster Dulles to a group of top Washington policy makers one day in June 1953. The Secretary of State held in his hand a plan of operation to overthrow the prime minister of Iran prepared by Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt of the CIA. There was scarcely any discussion amongst the high powered men in the room, no probing questions, no legal or ethical issues raised.

"This was a grave decision to have made," Roosevelt later wrote. "It involved tremendous risk. Surely it deserved thorough examination, the closest consideration, somewhere at the very highest level. It had not received such thought at this meeting. In fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free or had the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking."

Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore and distant cousin of Franklin, was expressing surprise more than disappointment at glimpsing American foreign-policy-making undressed. The original initiative to oust Mossadegh had come from the British, for the elderly Iranian leader had spearheaded the parliamentary movement to nationalize the British owned Anglo-lranian Oil Company (AIOC), the sole oil company operating in Iran. In March 1951, the bill for nationalization was passed, and at the end of April Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a large majority of Parliament. On 1 May, nationalization went into effect. The Iranian people, Mossadegh declared, "were opening a hidden treasure upon which lies a dragon".

As the prime minister had anticipated, the British did not take the nationalization gracefully, though it was supported unanimously by the Iranian parliament and by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people for reasons of both economic justice and national pride. The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it. What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadegh's head. A servant does not affront his lord with impunity.

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Iran_KH.html