My 5 Favorite Books of 2020

This year I read mostly non-fiction. Mostly politics too. I learned more about the dangers of American-style democracy and liberalism. I also learned a lot about the CIA and just how much it has harmed the rest of the world. The books that uncovered the truth about the CIA were my favorites of the year because they allowed me to zoom out and truly see the American experiment for what it really is.

Before reading these books, it's important to understand that the CIA is the organized crime branch of the U.S. government. They are nothing but legal thugs. They do not promote democracy. They do not promote peace. They do not promote human rights. The agency exists solely to crush anticapitalist, communist movements around the world. They are a force of evil throughout the world that acts on behalf of multinational corporations and their profits. If the CIA disappeared, the entire world would be a much better place.

The only American president who ever questioned the existence of the CIA and then dared to defund and disband it—John F. Kennedy—was assassinated.

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

THE JAKARTA METHOD

After hearing author Vincent Bevins talk about his latest book on numerous podcasts, I bought his book and ended up devouring it within two days. I’m interested in Southeast Asian politics and history, and everything Bevins talked about in interviews was compelling. For those who might be on the fence about this one, trust me — it’s worth the read, and since it unfolds like a drama, it goes fast.

The American cold war crusade killed millions. This book is about how the U.S. ruined Indonesia, Chile, and other countries for decades by ousting their leaders simply because they wanted a better life for their people.

“Bevins went to great lengths to dig up facts on coup d’états—that were supported by the CIA—in Indonesia, Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, and 18 other countries. He also told the stories of ordinary people whose lives had been destroyed by these events. Bevins' narrative convincingly describes how the turmoil in Indonesia was not an isolated incident, but the biggest puzzle piece of U.S. anticommunism strategy in the Third World, that is to make sure none of the newly independent countries fall into Soviet's hands. In the First World, the memories of Cold War consisted mainly of the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, and the nuclear threats. These events are often depicted in novels and Hollywood movies. For the residents of the Third World, the terrors from both US-supported and the Soviet/China-supported regimes (they are not innocent, either) are much more concrete.” - Adisudewa

In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring similar genocidal, anticommunist programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile.

My biggest takeaway from this book is that the anticommunist ideology is way more homicidal than the worst iteration of communism can be. It also got me thinking about the Cold War outside of the U.S.-Soviet paradigm, since it focuses on the global south, which we rarely hear about because communism throughout the Third World was connected to nationalism, but not the kind of nationalism we saw in Nazi Germany. For many Third World countries, nationalism meant anticolonialism and anti-imperialism. My third biggest takeaway from this book was the concept of the Third World itself. At one time, the term “Third World” was a point of pride for countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The idea was that they would form an international coalition separate from the more developed, wealthy, western (white) countries and become just as prosperous and independent. The United States destroyed their hopes, murdered millions of the coalition’s leaders and supporters, and turned the term Third World into a pejorative, synonymous with backwards, dirty and poor.

The American legacy will be its destruction of the non-western world (the Native Americans, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia). One of the reasons it’s not widely known or talked about is testament to how successful the CIA has been in its coups, interventions, assassinations, genocides, and secret wars. Never underestimate just how much the United States hates socialism and communism and will go to any length to prevent true reform that favors the wellbeing of people over profits.

The Darker Nations and Washington Bullets, both by Vijay Prashad

WASHINGTON BULLETS

After reading The Jakarta Method, I was fully “jokerfied” and wanted to learn more about the effects of U.S. foreign interventions and the overreaches of American capitalism/imperialism.

Washington Bullets is a book that details the many plots against people’s democratic movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World, all carried out by none other than the United States.

Journalist and author Vijay Prashad begins his story after the U.S. unnecessarily bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. After World War II, global politics were reset. European colonists backed away from their territories all over the global south. But decolonization is a difficult and long process that goes beyond a country’s sudden independence. Many newly independent nations found themselves playing catch-up in a world of political and economic systems that were not designed for them. They had to hurry up and learn how to self-govern and defend themselves in an interconnected global network. Most of their populations weren’t trained for political or economic leadership, especially at this level.

The stage was set for the United States to swoop in and pick up where former European colonizers left off. They claimed to be helping spread “democracy and freedom” but they were really just colonizers under a different guise. Prashad lays out the nine steps that can be applied to the coups that took place in Latin America, Africa, and Iran during the Cold War. He also shows the more modern coups—dominance through the World Bank, the IMF, sanctions, and through “lawfare”—that has been especially effective in contemporary hotspots like Venezuela and Bolivia, Guatemala, Grenada, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Chile, Indonesia, the Congo, Haiti, Vietnam, Korea … Basically anywhere where communism or socialism popped up, the U.S. has worked to crush it.

This is the shortest book on this list at only 150 pages and serves as a broad overview in its analysis of the U.S. Empire’s political machinery. Countries that resist the U.S. do so at incredible costs to their people. The ongoing U.S.-led war against communism/socialism (the only threats to capitalism) has been vehement and unrepentant. It’s important to understand that a better world is possible, and it’s just as important to understand who has decided why we still don’t have it.

Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer

POISONER IN CHIEF

This book is about Sidney Gottlieb, the man behind the CIA's secret drug and mind control experiments of the 1950s and 60s. As the head of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control project, he ran brutal experiments at secret prisons on three different continents. He made pills, powders and serums that could kill or maim without any trace. For years, Gottlieb was the chief supplier of the spy tools used by CIA operatives around the world. His experiments and covert operations have destroyed countless lives and extended past the 22 years he worked at the CIA.

The title, Poisoner in Chief, was the actual nickname Gottlieb had at the agency. He had an incredibly broad mandate to find drugs that would be useful in the field and fashion them into weapons in order to inject victims directly, or poison their food or their clothing. In order to test them, he routinely tortured unwitting victims both in the USA and around the world. International norms, treaties and laws were of no concern. The CIA reported to no one, dreamed up its own projects and acted on its own missions. All in the name of truth, justice and American exceptionalism, of course. Budgets could be unlimited, and scope was a wide as the imagination.

The patients he experimented on were called, “expendables.”

“Expendables” were subjected to baking, freezing, constant light, constant dark, starvation, sleep deprivation, unbearable sounds and unbearable silence. They were sourced all over the world—prisoners, derelicts, hospital patients—anyone the country could do without, for cash. The CIA disposed of the bodies, guaranteed. It was all very reminiscent of the Nazis. In fact, the CIA secured the services of Nazi concentration camp doctors to learn from. CIA officers, called, “fixers” covered up everything.

And after all this, the result was nothing. “As of 1960 no effective knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac, recruitment pill was known to exist … Years of MK-ULTRA experiments had failed,” Kinzer says. This marked the beginning of Gottlieb’s acknowledgement that his search had been in vain, though it cost thousands of lives interrupted or terminated.

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

CHAOS: CHARLES MANSON, THE CIA, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE SIXTIES

Was Charles Manson a CIA operative meant to discredit the counterculture, anti-establishment and civil rights movements of the 1960s? And how was the FBI involved in the Manson murders? Journalist Tim O'Neill certainly thinks so, and he spent two decades diligently researching his thesis.

There were two secret missions: one launched by the CIA, called Chaos, and the other by the FBI, called COINTELPRO. They had the same objective—to infiltrate groups like the Black Panthers and incite violence to discredit the organization. If you remember, that was part of Manson’s motive for those high profile murders in the Hollywood Hills. He wanted to convince law enforcement that they were committed by the Black Panthers and incite a race war.

There was another program launched by the CIA called MK-ULTRA (see my review of Prisoner in Chief above) which was exploring the effects of LSD and how it could lead to the creation of malleable assassins. Charles Manson was already famous for his ability to manipulate people into doing what he wanted. Is it possible that he was trained by the CIA as part of what should have been illegal programs? If so, then he succeeded. After the Manson murders, all of America was suddenly afraid of the hippie movement and the potential for a race war. It marked the end of the counter-culture movement.

The revelations in this book blew my mind. Tom O'Neill dug up so many inconsistencies in the investigation and trial and everything points to a major cover-up.

Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine

SURVEILLANCE VALLEY: THE SECRET MILITARY HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

In the 1960s, everyone was afraid of computers, young people especially. They saw them as a technocratic tool of surveillance and social control. By the 1990s, everything had changed. Those who protested computers now said they would liberate us from oppression. Suddenly computers were the great equalizer! It was impossible not to believe the hype at the time. So what happened??

The origins of the internet go back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. Intelligence officer William Godel realized the key to winning the Vietnam War was not outgunning the enemy but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. The idea to use computers to spy on people both at home and abroad drove the ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s and continues to be the heart of the internet we all know and use today. Surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet -- it was woven into the entire fabric of the technology. Today, Google, Facebook and Amazon do double duty as military and intelligence contractors. The military and Silicon Valley are inseparable and form the massive military-digital complex we have today.

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