Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations

by Vijay Prashad

Overview

Essays on acts of US imperialism, from the 1953 Iran coup to the 2019 ouster of Evo Morales

Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent and readable stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. It is a book that could easily have been a song of despair—a lament of lost causes; it is, after all, a roll call of butchers and assassins; of plots against people’s movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World by the country where liberty is a statue.

Despite all this, Washington Bullets is a book about possibilities, about hope, about genuine heroes. One such is Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso—also assassinated—who said: ‘You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.’

Washington Bullets is a book infused with this madness, the madness that dares to invent the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583679067
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	09/22/2020
Pages:	162
Sales rank:	92,758
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World, and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His most recent book is Red Star Over the Third World. He writes regularly for Frontline, The Hindu, Alternet, and BirGun. He is Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.

Table of Contents

Preface Evo Morales Ayma 9

Files 13

'Bring Down More US Aircraft' 17

Part 1

Divine Right 23

Preponderant Power 24

Trusteeship 26

'International Law Has to Treat Natives as Uncivilized' 28

'Savage Tribes Do Not Conform to the Codes of Civilized Warfare' 31

Natives and the Universal 34

UN Charter 36

'I am for America' 39

Solidarity with the United States against Communism 42

'No Communist in Gov. or Else' 45

'Nothing Can Be Allowed' 48

Third World Project 51

Expose the US 'Unnecessarily' 57

Part 2

Manual for Regime Change 65

Production of Amnesia 90

'Be a Patriot, Kill a Priest' 93

The Answer to Communism Lay in the Hope of Muslim Revival 97

'I Strongly Urge You to Make This a Turning Point' 100

'The Sheet is Too Short' 106

The Debt of Blood 110

All the Cameras Have Left For the Next War 111

Part 3

'Our Strategy Must Now Refocus' 115

'Rising Powers Create Instability in the International State System' 119

'Pave the Whole Country' 122

Banks Not Tanks 126

First Amongst Equals 128

Only One Member of the Permanent Security Council - the United States 130

Republic of NGOs 132

Maximum Pressure 135

Accelerate the Chaos 140

Sanctions are a Crime 142

Law as a Weapon of War 146

Dynamite in the Streets 148

We Believe in People and Life 152

Sources 155

Acknowledgements 161

Editorial Reviews

"Like his hero Eduardo Galeano, Vijay Prashad makes the telling of the truth lovable; not an easy trick to pull off, he does it effortlessly."

Roger Waters

"This book brings to mind the infinite instances in which Washington Bullets have shattered hope."

Evo Morales Ayma