{"id":15473,"date":"2011-05-02T18:41:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T00:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15473"},"modified":"2011-05-02T18:50:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T00:50:07","slug":"william-blum-the-anti-empire-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15473","title":{"rendered":"William Blum: The Anti-Empire Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>May 2nd, 2011<br \/>\nby William Blum<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.killinghope.org\/\">www.killinghope.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Iraq:<\/strong> Let us not forget what &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221; looks like.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Libya:<\/strong> Let us not be confused as to why Libya alone has been singled out for &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco.  Or  tried to.  The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by  cries from the audience of &#8220;war criminal&#8221; and &#8220;torturer&#8221;.  (For which we  can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can&#8217;t Wait.)  As one of  the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the  kind of statement that has now become standard for high American  officials under such circumstances: &#8220;Aren&#8217;t you glad this lady lives in a  democracy where she can express her opinion?&#8221;  She also threw in  another line that&#8217;s become <em>de rigueur<\/em> since the US overthrew  Saddam Hussein, an argument that&#8217;s used when all other arguments fail:  &#8220;The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein,  thank God.&#8221; <sup><a id=\"link-1\" href=\"http:\/\/killinghope.org\/bblum6\/aer93.html#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to  correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire  leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it  was that &#8220;you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.&#8221; &#8230;  The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/killinghope.org\/bblum6\/aer93.html\">Click here to continue reading &#8220;The Anti-Empire Report&#8221; by William Blum<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 2nd, 2011 by William Blum www.killinghope.org Iraq: Let us not forget what &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221; looks like. Libya: Let us not be confused as to why Libya alone has been singled out for &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221;. On April 9, Condoleezza Rice &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15473\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-41z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15473"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15478,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15473\/revisions\/15478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}