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Stephen Kinzer: The true flag (2016) 5 stars

Review of 'The true flag' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Engaging, almost nail-bitingly entertaining format for a critical and enduringly topical tale.

Crucial, forgotten analysis of previous anti-imperialist efforts by Mark Twain (not just a cuddly, escapist entertainer as modern education systems would have us believe) and others, and their overriding by scheming super-villain duo Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt.

Lodge, the evil mastermind behind the greedy me-too-ist desire for the US to colonially exploit, skillfully enlists war criminal and megalomaniac Roosevelt, assisted substantially by capitalist greedy William Randolph Hearst.

Fantastic points are made here that are now made in sort of muted, watered-down and comparatively feeble ways today regarding our current and continued imperialist atrocities.

In particular, an attempt to pass off intervention as humanitarian; arguing that intervened regions are unfit for self-rule due to racialized dehumanization; arguing that someone else will intervene if we do not, to supposedly worse consequences; arguing that we will allow for self-government while setting up puppet governments; maneuvering around false promises made by predecessors to not subjugate via watering down or otherwise circumventing promises in fact if not in name.