BRATTLEBORO-On Thursday, May 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the 118 Elliot gallery, the Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC) in partnership with Brooks Memorial Library and Vermont Independent Media will host acclaimed author and journalist Stephen Kinzer.
Kinzer will kick off WWAC's speaker series on what organizers call "the global blowback of U.S. aggressive intervention, military actions, and regime change."
Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. According to a news release, his articles and books have led The Washington Post to place him "among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling."
He spent more than 20 years working for The New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent.
His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed, and bombed from the air.
Currently, he is a frequent contributor to The Boston Globe.
How does U.S. foreign policy sow long seeds of instability, authoritarianism, migration, and resentment? While many Americans have a short-term historical memory or lack knowledge of historic interventions, the rest of the world has a long memory for 20th century U.S. intervention and regime change.
Organizers said that "central to deepening a global understanding of these events is the concept of 'blowback.'"
In his 2000 book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the late Chalmers Johnson, who was an eminent scholar of Asia, former CIA consultant and self-described "cold warrior," explained the term "blowback," invented by Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency for internal use, "refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of 'terrorists' or 'drug lords' or 'rogue states' or 'illegal arms merchants' often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations."
For example, he says, the U.S. covertly aided in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, which led to the 1979 Iranian revolution and taking of the U.S. embassy and hostages - and two generations of instability.
Reserve your seat at globalblowback.eventbrite.com. There will be a live stream option for this event. Visit windhamworldaffairscouncil.org for the link. There is a $10 suggested donation. No one, however, will be turned away for lack of funds.
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