[Marxism] More on William Blum

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/21/bin_laden_book/print.html
The bin Laden book club
How the world's most notorious terrorist just launched an obscure left-wing
American author into bestseller stardom.

By Michael Scherer

Jan. 21, 2006 | Watch out, Oprah Winfrey, Osama bin Laden has jumped into
the book-promotion game.

On Wednesday, the 72-year-old Washington author William Blum existed only
on the fringes of the publishing industry. His 2000 foreign-policy
diatribe, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," ranked No.
205,763 on Amazon's bestseller list. His byline rarely appeared in print,
he says, because even left-leaning journals like the Nation often found his
views too radical.

But then the world's No. 1 newsmaker, bin Laden, showed up Thursday on the
Al-Jazeera network to promise another terrorist attack on America, ask
President Bush to withdraw American troops -- and plug Blum's book. "If
Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression," the reclusive
terrorist announced, in a video message bounced to a potential audience of
billions, "it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State'."

By Friday morning, "Rogue State" was ranked No. 35 on Amazon, just behind
Harry Potter and just ahead of Strunk & White. At home, in his small
Connecticut Avenue apartment, Blum was delighted to learn from a reporter
news about his newfound profitability. "Oh my God," the author exclaimed,
wearing his morning slippers as he scribbled the Amazon statistics on a pad
of paper. "I must tell my publisher."

It was the latest shocker in a two-day whirlwind for Blum, a former State
Department employee whose ideological views fall somewhere between those of
Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark. A simple, earnest man, with a grandfather
beard and gold-rimmed glasses, he is used to the quiet life, working at his
computer on his e-newsletter, the Anti-Empire Report, and taking walks in
the neighborhood. But he did not sleep much Thursday night, following a
trio of last-minute television appearances on CNN, ABC News and MSNBC. "Are
you familiar with MSNBC? Is that on the Internet?" he asked, his
antenna-only television sitting a few feet away. "If one has cable one can
get that?"

Then the phone rang. It was a producer for National Public Radio, who
wanted to book him on a show. The Times of London and the New York Post had
called minutes earlier. Then Christopher Dickey, of Newsweek, was on the
line from Paris. A moment later, a reporter for the Washington Post style
section. "That's the Washington Post," Blum said, after hanging up the
phone. "They will not print any of my letters ever, but now they are
sending over a man to interview me." The phone rang again. The Post wanted
to send a photographer. "Oh boy," said Blum, who wore a loose-fitting plaid
shirt. "This is very new. I have a very fixed daily routine of taking care
of my e-mail, and my e-mail has ballooned beyond my control."

It's easy enough to see why bin Laden chose Blum -- despite the fact that
Blum grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the child of Jewish immigrants from Poland.
In the first line of "Rogue State," Blum writes, "Washington's war on
terrorism is as doomed to failure as its war on drugs has been." This fits
securely into the singular theme that Blum has pursued through four books.
"The U.S. government does not mean well. It doesn't care whether it does
good or bad," he explained. "The second lesson is that anti-American
terrorists are not motivated at all by things cultural. It's what we do.
It's American foreign policy."

Over the years, Blum's books have been translated into 15 different
languages, including Chinese, Korean, Greek, Finnish, Spanish and two
Arabic editions. They are all displayed on one of the many bookshelves in
his small living room, a converted office otherwise decorated with the
detritus of an activist's life: A dollar bill with President Bush's face
and the words "The United States of Aggression"; a Project Censored award;
and a lapel pin that says, "Gay Whales Against Racism." He admits, "I am
not very p.c."

He arrived in Washington in the 1960s, an avowed anti-communist with dreams
of joining the Foreign Service. But his State Department career was cut
short after he became a leader in the local protests against the Vietnam
War. He later founded a short-lived alternative magazine called the
Washington Free Press, which he admits in retrospect was not Pulitzer
quality. "The others thought that editing was bourgeois," he said. The Free
Press folded in 1970, and Blum began traveling the world, living in Chile
during the presidency of Salvador Allende, in Germany and in England. His
wife, whom he is separated from, still lives in Germany with their
24-year-old son. He published his first book in 1986, "The CIA: A Forgotten
History," which received back-cover blurbs from Gore Vidal and Oliver Stone.

As for his newest booster, Blum offers no apologies. "The people who have
interviewed me in the last few days, they keep pressing me to say how
repulsed I am to get a plug from Osama bin Laden. I am not repulsed." That
is not to say he has any sympathy for bin Laden's brand of violence or
religious extremism, only that he is not surprised that bin Laden agrees
with his writing. "I hate any kind of religious fundamentalism," he says.
He did not support U.S. military actions in Afghanistan or Iraq, but he
says he would hate to see bin Laden and his crew in charge of either
country. "The oppression of women," he says. "The whole thing turns me off."

"Rogue State" was originally published before the attacks of Sept. 11. Bin
Laden, perhaps lacking a fact-checking department or easy access to a
library, actually never quoted from that book. In his video, he used words
from one of Blum's later works, "Freeing the World to Death." The
inaccurate citation doesn't bother Blum, who stands behind the writing that
caught bin Laden's eye: "If I were the president, I could stop terrorist
attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently," reads the
section quoted in part by the world's most notorious terrorist. "I would
first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and
impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American
imperialism." In that passage, Blum goes on to explain that he would end
American support for Israel and reduce the military budget by 90 percent.
"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House," Blum
writes. "On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."

Who would assassinate him? Blum smiled at the question. Standing at the
center of an international media swarm, he raised his arms and extended his
forefingers to pantomime quotation marks. He paused for dramatic effect.

"Them."


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism