Essays and Speeches
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Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List — February 2013
Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. Keep reading →
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Be nice to America. Or we’ll bring democracy to your country! — April 2010
An animated short written by William Blum. Keep reading →
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Team Obama/Cult Obama — June 2009
The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult. Keep reading →
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“Building A New World” conference speech, Radford University — May 2008
My assignment here today, as I understand it, is to enlighten you all on how to quickly end the war in Iraq. And how to prevent the United States from attacking Iran. Or Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia. In short, how to put an end to the American empire. Also, how to impeach Bush and Cheney. Keep reading →
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Appealing to the United States is not very appealing — April 2006
With his recent letter to President Bush, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become part of a long tradition of Third-World leaders who, under imminent military or political threat from the United States, communicated with Washington officials in the hope of removing that threat. Let us hope that Ahmadinejad’s effort doesn’t result in the equally traditional outright US rejection. Keep reading →
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The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy — December 2005
For more than a decade, the sentiment has been proclaimed on so many occasions by the president and other political leaders, and dutifully reiterated by the media, that the thesis: “Cuba is the only non-democracy in the Western Hemisphere” is now nothing short of received wisdom in the United States. Let us examine this thesis carefully for it has a highly interesting implication. Keep reading →
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If John Kerry is the answer, what is the question? — March 2004
Of all the issues that the presidential campaign will revolve around, none is more important to me than foreign policy. I say this not because that is my area of specialty, but because the bombings, invasions, coups d’état, depleted uranium, and other horrors that are built into United States foreign policy regularly bring to the people of the world much more suffering and despair than any American domestic policy does at home. I do not yearn for “anybody but Bush”. I yearn for a president who will put an end to Washington’s interminable indecent interventions against humanity. This is, moreover, the only way to end the decades-long hatred that has spawned so many anti-American terrorists. Keep reading →
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Debate on United States foreign policy — October 2003
On October 9, 2003 a debate was held at venerable Trinity College in Dublin. Organized by the University Philosophical Society, the proposition to be debated was: “America’s foreign policy does more harm than good.” Keep reading →
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The Warmongers need for a justification for the devastation of Iraq — April 2003
When you wage a war that is strongly opposed by the great majority of those on the planet who are aware of such things, when your own people are becoming increasingly militant against your unilateral waging of that war, when you know well that your war is palpably and embarrassingly illegal, immoral, illogical and unjust, when you can’t admit the real reasons for the war ... then you have a consuming need to find a moral-sounding and credible selling point—“Regime change”, to remove the evil Saddam, the Iraqi people will welcome us with flowers and music! Keep reading →
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What do the Imperial Mafia really want? — February 2003
Which is the more remarkable—that the United States can openly announce to the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack from the intended target? Or that for an entire year the world has been striving to figure out what the superpower’s real intentions are? Keep reading →
