- "We have morality on our side." --William
Blum
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- Ironic words flowing from the pen of a man who has devoted
forty years of his life to hard-core dissent against the United States,
the most moral nation in the history of civilization.
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- We are a nation founded upon bedrock principles of Christianity.
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- Would Christ not have approved of chattel slavery, the
Native American genocide, and the millions of "savages" we have
slaughtered to expand our borders and to maintain "Pax Americana?"
Those who have died to sustain our peace and prosperity were but martyrs
for a cause greater than themselves. In a sense, each one of them was a
little Jesus.
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- Jesus certainly would have approved of American Capitalism.
He was a fisher of men. Our bourgeois are fishers of men's wealth. Those
who reach the apex of our system's hierarchy enable Christianity to flourish.
By clawing their way to the top (driven by the greed and selfishness which
our cynical culture rewards), they provide a criminal ruling class for
us to bestow our compassion upon. More importantly, by condemning a large
percentage of the population to economic struggle or poverty, they present
us with an endless supply of hungry, broken people to whom we can minister
and tend.
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- The book of Genesis clearly states that God gave us "dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth." So relax. Rapacious consumption resulting in severe environmental
damage, the infliction of intense suffering upon animals, and species extinction
is a divine right. Who are we to argue with God's edict that humans rule?
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- Jehovah set the gold standard when he deployed fire and
brimstone, but we have managed to approximate his divine wrath. Just ask
the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, North Vietnam, or a host
of other malefactors we punished with a well-deserved rain of fire.
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- Clearly we Americans are fulfilling our divine mission
to maintain the moral order of the world each day. We continue to drive
a stake through the heart of Godless Communism. We torture terrorists.
We execute murderers. We topple dictators, spread liberty, and punish Islamofascist
nations harshly.
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- Yet despite all we do for the world, there are still
those who hate us. Worse still, there are Americans, like William Blum,
who have the audacity to bad-mouth this great nation. It is a tribute to
our patience and humanity that we put up with such ingratitude and calumny.
Thankfully, he represents a tiny segment of our overwhelmingly patriotic
populace.
- While people like him slander our magnificent country
with idiotic little T-shirt slogans like, "Fighting for peace is like
fucking for virginity", our men and women in uniform are fighting
to keep the world safe for democracy.
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- How do such so-called progressives think? Let's find
out by eavesdropping on that incessant moralist, Jason Miller, as he questions
Blum, a widely published author and scathing critic of the land of the
free:
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- JM: You are quite a remarkable individual. False modesty
aside, if you were introducing yourself to an individual who didn't know
you and giving them a summary of who William Blum is, how would that introduction
go?
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- WB: It would of course depend largely on who the person
was and what the circumstances were, but I might say that I spent the first
half of my life in the "bourgeois" world, including IBM and the
Department of State, and then was radicalized by Vietnam and became a drug-using,
semi-hippie, underground-press writer, world traveler, book author, campus
speaker, commie terrorist threat to all that is decent and holy.
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- JM: In early 2006, Osama bin Laden told US Americans
that they needed to read your book, Rogue State: A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower. What were the immediate effects and consequences
for you?
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- WB: Instant celebrity, on many of the major news programs,
including CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, etc., with a chance to say things to the great
unwashed that I would never otherwise have had; 1000 emails, half hostile,
a couple threatening.
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- JM: Obviously, the dust has had plenty of time to settle.
How has bin Laden's "endorsement" affected your book sales and
impact as a political educator and social activist?
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- WB: About 15,000 extra copies of Rogue State sold.
I use the experience in my talks on campus, explaining why I was not embarrassed
by the endorsement, as I had mentioned on air, and which had
bothered my interviewers, like Wolf Blitzer, who wanted me to disown
the entire endorsement.
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- JM: In Rogue State, you write, "No
matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is
actually doing is worse than you imagine." To what extent can
you attribute this conclusion to first-hand knowledge derived from your
years with the State Department, or otherwise?
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- WB: I was a computer systems analyst and programmer at
the State Dept; not much privy to important secrets except for the lists
they kept of baddies, foreign and domestic. Reading the news carefully,
with a knowledge of the past, is enough to make one suspicious.
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- JM: I note that you spent some time in Chile observing
Allende's attempt to implement socialism. Had Allende survived, how successful
do you think he would have been in fending off the relentless tide of neoliberalism?
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- WB: I think he would have done pretty well at that.
He was a sincere man of the left, not a Democratic Party type liberal.
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- JM: How much affinity did Allende have for Castro?
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- WB: As far as I remember, a lot.
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- JM: Please briefly compare and contrast Allende and Hugo
Chavez.
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- WB: Allende didn't deliberately antagonize the US as
Chavez does. I wish Chavez would cool it a bit. He's antagonizing homicidal
maniacs, literally. Yet, Allende's moderation in language and policy didn't
save him from Washington's wrath. Once you're an ODE (Officially Designated
Enemy) of Washington, your days are numbered, or at least your life
and program will be made next to impossible.
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- JM: What chance do you believe the Bolivarian Revolution
has of succeeding in becoming a viable alternative and genuine threat to
the hegemony of the militaristic, rapacious imperialism which is inextricably
linked to "American Capitalism?"
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- WB: Based on past experience, not much chance.
But what's new is the oil money. That changes the picture. But I can't
predict what's going to happen.
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- JM: You left the State Department in 1967 because of
your opposition to the Vietnam War. What do you think the opposition to
the Iraqi Occupation, which obviously comprises many people, needs to do
to increase its effectiveness?
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- WB: All I can ever suggest is education. Educate yourself
and as many others as you can. I write my books and give public talks with
that in mind, giving activists talking points to help them to convince
others, giving newcomers new food for thought, planting seeds. Our numbers
are indeed growing and I can only hope that at some point it will reach
a critical mass and "explode". I can't offer more than that.
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- JM: During the Vietnam War, you founded and edited the
Washington Free Press. Since there was no Internet, how did you distribute
your underground publication?
- WB: Mainly in street sales and at events, plus dozens
of book stores and other venues; at our peak we sold maybe 20-25 thousand
each issue.
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- JM: What contact, if any, did you have with radical groups
like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, whose members were investigated,
pursued, incarcerated, or in some cases, murdered, by our government?
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- WB: I knew individual members, some wrote for the Free
Press, but I personally was never a member of any group. In later years,
I was a member of Trotskyist groups in the US and the UK.
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- JM: While there are distinct parallels between Vietnam and
Afghanistan/Iraq, there are also a number of differences. Would you kindly
lend us your insight by briefly comparing and contrasting the two?
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- WB: The US had no intention of occupying Vietnam.
But in Iraq and Afghanistan they have done so because
of oil and oil pipelines.
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- JM: What did your work with Philip Agee, former CIA agent
and author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, entail?
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- WB: I didn't work with him so much as with other people
in London who had a relationship with him. We were engaged in
exposing covert CIA officers in the US embassy.
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- JM: You publicly supported Ralph Nader's bids for the
presidency. I have been repeatedly lambasted for voting for Nader. How
would you respond to critics who claim that voting outside the deeply corrupt
duopoly is a "wasted vote"?
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- WB: It would be hard to imagine a more wasted vote
than voting for someone you don't like or support. I should add that I
think that most people who voted for Nader would not have voted at all
if he was not a candidate. So for all these people, Nader votes did not
rob the Democrats of a vote.
- JM: When can we expect another book from you?
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- WB: I don't know. I'm sort of burnt out. I'm not an
author who feels obliged to keep turning out book after book. I have to
see a gap to fill.
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- JM: You words here: "I'm committed to fighting U.S. foreign
policy, the greatest threat to peace and happiness in the world, and being
in the United States is the best place for carrying out the battle.
This is the belly of the beast, and I try to be an ulcer inside of it."
As a veteran of this struggle, you are a true inspiration to the rest of
us aspiring ulcers. What words of advice and encouragement do you have
for us?
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- WB: See my reply above about education. And when you're
in ideological conflict with one of the bad guys, and he's mouthing the
usual patriotic/conservative clichés, don't be shy of challenging
any of those clichés. He's so unused to having them challenged
that he's often thrown for a loss. Like always, question the motivation
of the US in their interventions from a MORAL point of view.
We have morality on our side -- look at Iraq, et al. The conservatives
have a very difficult time dealing with this.
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- As we can plainly see, these two men-Blum and Miller--
are representative of that nefarious counter-culture which began to rear
its ugly head in the sixties, aborted our valiant efforts to save Vietnam,
and persists to this very day. Their utopian, and let's be candid here,
utterly inane attempts to universally apply moral principles such as compassion,
justice, and human dignity are roadblocks to American progress and success.
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- As we know, civilization would devolve into chaos if
the United States collapsed. Ergo, regardless of the cost in
human lives or damage to the environment, the truly moral thing to do is
to pursue America's interests.
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- Now who has morality on their side
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- _________________
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- Author's Note: I extend my sincere thanks to William
Blum for granting me a cyber-interview. It was truly an honor to engage
in the Q&A and a joy to write the accompanying satirical analysis.
- William Blum is the author of: Killing
Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
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- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. His essays have been
widely published, he is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor
(http://www.bestcyrano.org/), and he volunteers at homeless shelters.
He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or
via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, athttp://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/
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