Hello I’ve been on a 1970s history kick lately and wanna read more about things like the CIA’s heroin and cocaine trading. Preferrably in book length formats with a left point of view, but I mean I’ll read liberal historians too like I also enjoy reading Robert Paxton and George Mosse stuff.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    Operation Gladio : The Unholy Alliance Between The Vatican , The CIA And The Mafia, Paul L. Williams (2015)

    I haven’t read this yet so I can’t comment on it, but I’m constantly on the lookout for like The Jakarta Method equivalent on Operation GLADIO and have yet to find one.

    • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      American Exception by Aaron Good as well, Aaron has worked extensively with David Talbott and Peter Dale Scott, the authors of those two books, and is of a younger generation of academic where he’s not nearly as squeamish about calling out the Israel Lobby.

      E) It’s worth pointing out that Aaron Good is working on a new project accounting for his developments over the last five years. At the moment it exists as a series of interviews (4 parts) conducted by Max Arvo in their SOGA Interviews on the American Exception Patreon.

  • BuhbyeLittleGumshoe [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago
    • Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection
    • The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War (air america, french connection, golden triangle are in this book I recall?)

    To my understanding PDS takes a sort of post-liberal institutionalist view on the US, but that commentary is kept in the call to actions and the history remains grounded. As a fun thought experiment, consider how the popularity and production of certain drugs rose and fell with US military interventions. Secret war in Laos, dope, 60s, contras, crack, 80s, Afghanistan, 2000s, heroin. In the last case, 90% of the market was in Afghanistan. Rather than being fought, these markets work synergistically with enforcement.

    • electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I recall reading that the occupied Afghani government was trying to get into the legal/pharma opiate market, but the existing cartel (India, Turkey, Tasmania) wouldn’t let them in.