William Blum

William Blum (born 1933 ) is an American author, historian, who specializes in sharp critics of United States foreign policy. He is also known as a speaker in the college lecture circuit and a former underground journalist. He worked for the State Department in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist, he said he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War. He left the Department in 1967. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various parts of the world. Blum also worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.[1]

From 1972 to 1973 Blum worked as a freelance journalist in Chile, where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment". In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex-CIA agent Philip Agee and his associates. Agee wrote a critique of CIA operations in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary.

Blum was the founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, one of the many newspapers in the loosely organized U.S. underground press in the 1960s and 1970s that opposed the Vietnam War.

In the late 1980s, Blum moved to Los Angeles to work on a documentary on U.S. foreign policy based on his own book Killing Hope. He worked on this together with the filmmaker Oliver Stone but the project ultimately floundered.

In his writing, Blum devotes substantial attention to CIA interventions and assassination plots. Blum describes himself as a socialist and has supported Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns. He has compared president George W. Bush with Hitler and the Iraq insurgency with the resistance against Nazist Germany.[2] He currently circulates a monthly newsletter by email called "The Anti-Empire Report". Blum's work was publicly recommended by several prominent people including Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, and Oliver Stone.

Osama bin Laden statement

In early 2006 (see 19 January 2006 Osama bin Laden tape), Blum briefly became the subject of widespread media attention when Osama bin Laden issued a public statement in which he quoted Blum and recommended that all Americans read Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. As a result of the mention sales of his book skyrocketed. "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com's index of the most-ordered books. In a May 22, 2006 article entitled, Come Out of the White House With Your Hands Up, Blum wrote, "Since the bin Laden recommendation, January 19, I have not been offered a single speaking engagement on any campus . . .This despite January-May normally being the most active period for me and other campus speakers."

Quotations

"Obama is clearly showing that he's presidential material by meeting the first requirement for that office: no inhibitions about killing large numbers of innocent and defenseless foreign people."[3]

There's no future at all in electoral politics for progressives as long as they fail to cut their ties to the hopeless and treacherous Democrats and concentrate on building a third party. (Violent revolution, if successful, would be a more efficient manner of effecting progressive social change, but it can be awfully messy.)[4]

"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship." (Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower).

“Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes... In the process, the U.S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.” (Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower).

"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine" (Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower).

"We can say that the United States runs the world like the Taliban ran Afghanistan. Cuba is dealt with like a woman caught outside not wearing her burkha. Horrific sanctions are imposed on Iraq in the manner of banning music, dancing, and kite-flying in Kabul. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is banished from Haiti like the religious police whipping a man whose beard is not the right length." (introduction to Freeing the World to Death).

"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America's global interventions -- including the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated.

Books

• 1986: The CIA: A Forgotten History (Zed Books) ISBN 0-86232-480-7
• 2000: Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Common Courage Press) ISBN 1-56751-194-5
• 2002: West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press) ISBN 1-56751-306-9
• 2003: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, revised edition (Common Courage Press) ISBN 1-56751-252-6
• 2004: Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common Courage Press)

External links

• "Killing Hope". Retrieved 2006-07-30. William Blum's Homepage, Anti-empire reports
• "Common Courage Press". Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• "Bio Files: William Blum". www.historyguy.com. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• "America's most feared man". Nerve. Retrieved 2006-11-17. An interview with Blum from Liverpool's 'Nerve' magazine
• "William Blum in the Media Whirlwind". C-span. Retrieved 2006-07-30. Transcript of William Blum’s Jan. 28, 2006 appearance on C-Span's call-in show Washington Journal
• "Bin Laden plug boosts book sales". Sydney Morning Herald. 2006. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Montgomery, David (2006). "The Author Who Got A Big Boost From bin Laden Historian 'Glad' of Mention As Sales of Book Skyrocket". Washington Post: C01. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)