The text below is an excerpt from “Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower”, by American author William Blum. It became world renowned when Osama Bin Laden quoted it on his video broadcast of January 2006. Addressing the American public, Bin Laden stated: "It is useful for you to read the book The Rogue State", and then quoted the beginning of the paragraph in question. In a week, the book went from being ranked 209,000 on Amazon´s sales list to being ranked number 12, ahead of best sellers such as The Da Vinci Code. Because of this, some have gone to the point of calling it “the book review of the decade”.

Anyway, whoever its fans may be, I think that the text is definitely worth reading and being reflected on, so here it goes.

"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. 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. Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every corner of the world, that America's global interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but now -- oddly enough -- a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would be more than enough money. One year's military budget of 330 billion dollars is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."

Demagogy or clairvoyance? You decide.

For more info on the subject, you can check the author´s website (and more precisely Anti-Empire Report, Feb. 2006).

Read More 6 comments | Posted by Nanauat |

6 comments

1. Anonymous on 3:39 PM

   It may happen again with the Noam Chomsky-President Chavez Affair...
   http://iblnews.com/story.php?id=17993

    
2. Nanauat on 7:49 PM

   You are right, Ruben. I thought the same thing this morning when I read a similar article on The New York Times.
   
   Actually, the whole episode is kind of funny since Chavez expressed his regret for, literally, "not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death". This is obviously an error since Chomsky is still alive, and well alive, as shown by his appearance in NYT.
   
   For more details, check:
   A Scholar Is Alive, Actually, and Hungry for Debate

    
3. Anonymous on 3:18 AM

   [It was a time out connection error] Thank you for your very nice comments, Paco!
   Lately, I am writting more often here that on my own blog!
   "I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really: get busy living or get busy dying." And these days I am dealing with a huge amount of things to do.
   Cheers, my friend: you're blog is growing and you with it!
   They are all really good posts indeed...

    
4. Nanauat on 11:26 AM

   Thank you, Ruben, for being the first (and so far the only) person to post comments in this blog ! :-)
   
   I hope the others won't be too shy to follow your example soon.
   
   By the way, I´ve seen the changes that you´ve made to your blog and it looks really good. Keep up the good work.

    
5. Anonymous on 5:17 AM

   Thanks, Paco!
   Commenting is always nice in your blog: there are always many interesting with to debate here...
   About my blog: I have moved to beta.blogger, and I'm just fooling around with with new controls...

    
6. Anonymous on 5:18 AM

   I meant, "interesting things"