William Blum

Essays and Speeches

• The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy

  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 →

• If John Kerry is the answer, what is the question?

  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 →

• Debate on United States foreign policy

  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 →

• The Warmongers need for a justification for the devastation of Iraq

  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 →

• What do the Imperial Mafia really want?

  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 →

• Book review: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast

  It’s enough to make one cynical. American elections are manipulated, British parliamentarians are bribed, scientific research is financed by companies who are interested parties, energy crises are rigged, and a score of other varieties of modern-day sleaze. What’s that? You say you’re already cynical? Well, unless you’re so cynical that you won’t even utter a word in the hope of changing anything, Greg Palast’s new book can be a handy tool. Keep reading →

• Concerning September 11, 2001 and the bombing of Afghanistan

  Following the terrible, momentous events of September 11, 2001, the most pressing mission facing the United States, in addition to punishing the perpetrators who were still alive, was—or should have been—to not allow what happened to pass without deriving important lessons from it to prevent its recurrence. Clearly, the most meaningful of these lessons was the answer to the question: Why do terrorists hate America enough to give up their lives in order to deal the country such mortal blows? Keep reading →

• Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United States

  It all began in September 1998 when the Justice Department accused 14 Cubans in southern Florida of “conspiracy to gather and deliver defense information to aid a foreign government, that is, the Republic of Cuba” and failing to register as agents of a foreign government. Four of the accused were never apprehended and are believed to be living in Cuba.  Five of the 10 arrested, having less than true-believer faith in the American- judicial-system, copped plea bargains to avoid harsher penalties and were sentenced to between three and seven years in prison. Keep reading →

• The Bombing of PanAm Flight 103: Case Not Closed

  The newspapers were filled with pictures of happy relatives of the victims of the December 21, 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. A Libyan, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, had been found guilty of the crime the day before, January 31, 2001, by a Scottish court in the Hague, though his co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. At long last there was going to be some kind of closure for the families. But what was wrong with this picture? Keep reading →

• Madeleine Albright, ethically challenged

  Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died.  I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima.  And—and you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” Keep reading →

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