Killing Hope

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Spreading Democracy - Rated
A thoroughly good read and recommended for anyone studying history, politics, sociology etc. It certainly gives food for thought and prompts you ask some very searching questions, one being, hasn't the US learned anything from intervening in other countries affairs. Especially where they are not welcome by the majority of the population. The book is laid out in easy to read sections covering each country. If you are writing anything to do with a country then this is a good starting point to see how 'freely' it has developed.

a correction to a previous review - Rated
I already have this book and was quite worried when I read a review on this site claiming that Blum had claimed Tibetans welcomed the Chinese occupation. Luckily, while the chapter in question has some faults, it claims no such thing.

I checked the chapter on China and in fact only 2 pages - 25 and 26 refer to Tibet at all. No-where in them is any reference to Tibetans welcoming the invasion or occupation. It does say that and that Tibetan guerillas opposed 'Peking rule and/or the profoundsocial changes being instituted by the revolution (serfdom and slavery were, literally, still prevalent in Tibet'). This may give the wrong impression - since it could be interpreted to mean the Chinese occupation led to a fairer or freer society while the reverse is undoubtedly the case. While Chinese human rights abuses and killings should have been mentioned for balance I feel the book is not as unbalanced as the previous reviewer suggests.

As for charges that the book is unbalanced or favours Chinese Communism here is an excerpt (from pages 26-27 - so people can check it for themselves)

'The Chinese devoted a great deal of effort to publicising their claim that the United States ....had dropped large quantities of bacteria and bacteria-laden insects over China. It presented the testimony of about 38 captured American airmen...It should be noted that some of the American's statements were so full of communist rhetoric...that their personal authorship of them must be seriously questioned. Moreover it was later learned that most of the airmen had only confessed after being subjected to physical abuse'

This seems fairly balanced to me (with the exception that in this context the euphemism 'physical abuse' should not be used in place of 'torture').

Overall I found the information in this book to be well sourced - with any problems being ommissions (e.g on Chinese human rights abuses) - but then the focus is on CIA and US military interventions - it does not pretend to analyse those of other governments and militaries.

Redressing the balance - Rated
This book is by no means a thorough investigation of world affairs nor an exercise in balanced reporting, the USA vs. 'Communism'.
It is however what it says it is, a detailed review of tactics used by the USA which have been forgotten or ommitted from general western history, which itself is slanted against other 'powers' or ideologies in order to create the idea that the allies are always 'the good guys' and can do no wrong.
This even in the face of copiuos evidence that the 'good guys' were in fact agent provocateurs and subversive, working with the aim of futhering Multi-national business and the commercial economy of the USA, Britain and its allies.
Good will, righteousness and press coverage can be shown as having served to engender this in our collective westernised society.
Hence any terrorism has to be based on Greed and Envy, instead of any nefarious actions on our behalf.
The wolrds view on Communism is both well documented and biassed. This book serves to redress the balance

Mainly Latin America/ Africa - Rated
I was expecting more on Indian Sub-continent and to my amazement Mr Blum ejected CIA's cunning strategy towards Pakistan and India. Some accounts of Patrice Lumumba (Congo) are also questionable - read "Patrice Lumumba" by Kanza. Overall, not as 'in-dept' as one hoped!

Hypocritical and very disturbing. - Rated
I bought this book not because it would tell me much new information (the information is already available from dozens of sources), but because it would bring this information together. Did it? Somewhat. As I read, though, I started to notice something very disturbing. In the early chapter on U.S. intervention in China, Blum describes Tibet as a slaveholding society where the populace welcomed the People's Liberation Army as liberators, and paints a picture of Mao Zedong as a benevolent ruler who only improved the lives of Tibetans. I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of Tibetan refugees and millions of Tibetans dead or existing as colonial subjects really appreciated the Chinese invasion. There is not one mention in any context of the Soviet Union's brutal repression of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s and 60s - interesting, since the author devotes pages to U.S. "sabotage" of Warsaw Pact industries. Later, he portrays the invasion of Afghanistan as a liberation, and completely ignores atrocities against Afghanis by Russian soldiers more severe than American attacks on Vietnamese.

Many commentators on the right accuse people like Noam Chomsky of sympathy for leftist and communist oppression and atrocities. I've never read anything like that in his work or in the work of many others, but this book definitely displays a double standard - the millions of dead and the colonialism practiced by communist governments somehow don't matter, are understandable, or, in the case of Blum's view of Tibet, justified and revolutionary, but if the United States does the same thing, it's racist imperialism.

I'm dissapointed in the notables who endorse this book. It's nothing more than an apologia for oppression and colonialism. I fail to see how one can oppose the continuing sanctions on Iraq or the way in which U.S. soldiers are being sent to fight and die in dozens of countries for reasons that are eerily reminiscent of the other great empires of history, but excuse the murder of millions by the Soviet and Chinese empires because they happened to be communist.

Wrong is wrong, whether the country is communist or capitalist. To say otherwise is indefensible.

Buy this book only if you have a nose for hypocrisy.