You wrote: “I often think that William Blum’s tragedy is that he could have made a very convincing case for the points he was trying to establish simply by making use of the established historical record. There is more than enough evidence of US skulduggery to fill a whole library full of books. Yet, Mr Blum seems to have no faith in his own convictions and persists in fabricating events which never took place, a process which has the effect of discrediting a perfectly good argument! …”
—> Before you start critiquing one of the foremost experts on this depressing area of historical study, may I suggest you carefully read his writing? As you should know, Mr. Blum is responsible for CREATING a good share of that “established historical record” you mention! Have you read “Freeing The World To Death: Essays On The American Empire”, “The CIA: Forgotten History”, “Rogue State - a Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” and/or “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”? Your claim of his “fabricating events which never took place” is easily refuted - if you actually look in his books, in at least the latter two (which I own), you will find numerous pages of notes backing up what he wrote.

——
You also wrote: “… In his comments on Mr Weiner’s book, he claims that the CIA engaged in sabotage in East Berlin and East Germany and that this was the reason for building the Berlin Wall. That is totally untrue. … Never once has anyone ever mentioned nay such “sabotage” and, indeed, anyone who ever visited West Berlin in the old days knows that such things would have been impossible to keep secret, particularly in the period before the Wall when movement between the two parts of the city was as open and free as it is today. …”
—> If so, please cite *your* sources. And could you kindly explain why, in “Killing Hope” (Notes - pp. 400-401), Mr. Blum is able to cite mention of such activities in “Nation’s Business”/”The New Yorker”/”The Nation”/”Saturday Evening Post”, as well as in books about the CIA?

——–
And you wrote: “…Mr Blum’s weakness is his essential irrationality. He starts from the premise that the US is always wrong, which is not that far off base. He then, illogically, concludes that since the US is always wrong, anyone that the US opposes must, by definition, always be right. …”
—> You’re not looking at his writing comprehensively enough. Blum (as befits his books examining US-orchestrated misdeeds) does indeed write thoroughly and extensively on US government & military crimes and atrocities - but he also notes those by our “enemies”. For instance, if you read “Killing Hope”, you will see that Blum mentions the ‘throwing overboard’ by the USSR of the Italian Communist Party just prior to Italy’s 1948 election/ the agreement by Stalin that the popular Greek leftist uprising against British/American occupation should be forcibly stopped/ and other ignoble actions by the USSR. And we all know that the US opposed the USSR! And as for Mr. Blum being ‘essentially irrational’, well … I’d bet on HIS rationality against yours or virtually ANY U.S. politician’s in a heartbeat! The U.S. government & military are ‘essentially irrational’ destruction machines; this is why the United States is indeed a Rogue State, as is Israel. Any thinking American who can read the detailed, comprehensive accounts of atrocities carried out around the world by our government & military - and yet NOT feel anger, even rage, at those actions - is in need of some serious professional help! (BTW, I also recommend reading the non-fiction comic book “Addicted to War”, by Joel Andreas).

———–

BTW, on another note, are you the author/co-author of the following books? :

Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide
by Matthew Festenstein and Michael Kenny (Paperback - Mar 18, 2005)

The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference
by Michael Kenny (Paperback - Jun 1, 2004)

Planning Sustainability: The Implications of Sustainability for Public Planning Policy (Environmental Politics)
by Michael Kenny (Paperback - Oct 20, 1999)

The First New Left: British Intellectuals After Stalin
by Michael Kenny (Paperback - Aug 1995)

———-
If you are, I would hope that you, as an author, would read another author’s books (in this case, “Killing Hope” would be best) prior to critiquing his/her writing.

Pardon my bluntness, Mr. Kenny, but your comments sound to me very much like you’re trying to defame Mr. Blum’s good name - in a sloppy manner … Please don’t waste his time, as I’m sure he’s a busy man.

One can but wonder about the withdrawl from Viet Nam. Due to its geographical location and ocean currents Viet Nam has beaches, the sand of which is almost all pure diatomic silica.

Ships which brought supplies would have to leave “in ballast” as very little was leaving Viet Nam during the war years, and the ballast in a lot of cases was this sand which they simply took. They would then sail to other Asian ports and sell this sand for an exhorbitant price to electronic firms as the purity of this sand rendered processing very inexpenise and ideal for the semi conductor industry. The shippers were literally picking money off the ground.

I have often wondered if we would have left Viet Nam had the computer/electronics industry been just a couple of more years advanced and they knew to take advantage of of that supply.

In his comments on Mr Weiner’s book, he claims that the CIA engaged in sabotage in East Berlin and East Germany and that this was the reason for building the Berlin Wall. That is totally untrue. Since re-unification, the German TV has spent hours and hours investigating every aspect of life under the dictatorship, interviewing both those who resisted it and those who worked for it. Never once has anyone ever mentioned nay such “sabotage” and, indeed, anyone who ever visited West Berlin in the old days knows that such things would have been impossible to keep secret, particularly in the period before the Wall when movement between the two parts of the city was as open and free as it is today.

The claim of sabotage is in fact the propaganda reason given by the East German dictatorship for building the Wall and nobody except Mr Blum (and least of all former East German officials!) now claims that there was any truth to such claims. It is now undisputed that the Wall was built to prevent the flight of the East German population, especially skilled workers, towards West Germany. In other words, Mr Blum, who is unable to cite a single, verifiable incident, is blindly mouthing the propaganda of a now defunct dictatorship!

Contrast that with his treatment of Gladio, whose existence is well-established and which has been linked by the Italian judiciary to Freemasonry and neo-fascist terrorism. The Bologna station bombing, carried out for the reasons Mr Blum states, blew the lid off the whole thing but I would guess that Gladio still exists somewhere in the shadows.

Mr Blum’s weakness is his essential irrationality. He starts from the premise that the US is always wrong, which is not that far off base. He then, illogically, concludes that since the US is always wrong, anyone that the US opposes must, by definition, always be right. He then takes the further illogical step repeating, on the basis of blind faith, whatever those US opponents say as established truth, notwithstanding the fact that his whole thesis is that people should not believe US government claims on the basis of blind faith and he has absolutely no need to use fabrications to prove that point!

Basically, Mr Blum is like a prosecutor who seeks to convict a criminal on the basis of fabricated evidence notwithstanding the fact that he has ample real evidence at his disposal!