Killing Hope
Is the United States a force for democracy? In this classic volume, William Blum serves up a forensic overview of U.S. foreign policy spanning sixty years. For those who want the details on our most famous actions (Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, to name a few), and for those who want to learn about our lesser-known efforts (France, China, Bolivia, Brazil, for example), this book provides a window on what our foreign policy goals really are.--From publisher description.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
12mentions
10people
2015–2026years
75% recommend17% neutral8% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Highly recommend: Killing Hope by William Blum, it dissects the history of the many authoritarian regimes the U.S. supported since WWII, coups the U.S. engineered, the revolutions it strangled in their infancy, governments it systematically destabilized, and the popular movements it crushed (often under the veneer of “stability” or “containment”).
- Almost all regimes in the Middle East (and even other Arab regimes) are having a very well relationship with Israel, even those who do not publicly do normalization of relations. Historically Israel (as well as the US.) supported these regimes to ensure its interest. Not many books written about that so far, but I recommend people to check William Blum's "Killing Hope", it studies a very similar case of supporting dictatorships by Israel's key sponsor (the United States).
- > We should act better than our adversaries, because we are better
While I "appreciate the candor", it is ofc "hilarious" that there are still people like you out there
Before you write such blatant naivety, I would recommend you to at least read Killing Hope by Blum, you feelings of candor and emotional need of belonging clearly lack any sort of historical foundation
- > any concrete evidence
What do you mean by "concrete evidence"?
Nothing of this is disputed, they even have their own wikipedia pages for their different operations and branches within USAID
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Public_Safety
*Specially* that we are talking of USAID, on the case of NED for example, things get slightly murkier because then it is a matter of private rather than public record, but it still works as a tool for management of semi-clandestine operations and operations which need plausible deniability from CIA's end, or at least as much deniability as it can muster, tho these days they prefer to work with shell groups and other associated partners such as for example Atlas Network, Radio Free Asia also falls on that category, same with Voice Of America
If you are interested in books both, Killing Hope by William Blum and Legacy Of Ashes by Weiner are very, very, very good authoritative sources on the matter
If you prefer podcasts, Warnerd Radio has a couple very good episodes on the National Endowment For Democracy, tho they both quote excerpts of the books above
Radio War Nerd EP 274 — National Endowment for Democracy, Part 1 https://podcastaddict.com/episode/121232504
Radio War Nerd EP 275 — National Endowment for Democracy, Part 2 https://podcastaddict.com/episode/121522126
- A great starter book on the topic you can download directly from CIA.gov:
Killing Hope: Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, William Blum
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF153...
- I actually read Killing Hope by William Blum a few years ago from the CIA link: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF153...
I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about CIA meddling in third world countries.
