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I must confess that I put down this fine book with a feeling of deep disheartenment. For what, after all, is the point of such meticulously reported studies if the American public is repeatedly going to wipe such episodes from its collective consciousness, and the American establishment is going to make similar mistakes over and over again, first in the cold war and now in the "war on terror" — each time covering its actions with the same rhetoric of spreading "freedom" and combating "evil"?
The book documents "forcible regime changes by the United States and its local allies over the past 110 years, starting with the undermining of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, passing through Cuba (1898), the Philippines (1898), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954) and elsewhere, and ending with present-day Iraq."
Amy Goodman interviewed the author this a.m. and will continue the interview on Monday on Democracy Now!
SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) “Either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; OR, the VICTORY OF SOCIALISM, that is, the conscious struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism.” Rosa Luxemburg
1 comment:
ANONYMOUS POSTED THIS COMMENT, BUT THE BLOG WAS ACTING UP SO I'M PUTTING IT ON MYSELF. 5-8-06
"While this does seem a valuable book, I have to ask what did Kinzer write about Nicaragua in the '80's? Progressives were appalled by his reporting on the contra wars, especially in light of his book on Guatemala. For instance, he almost never mentioned the massacres of civilians by the Reagan-backed contras. During the 80's the New York Times had a very conservative editor (who later went to the Washington Times) and it seemed as though Kinzer was tempering what he wrote."
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