I believe that the country needs a principled, decent left viewpoint which is accesible to most Americans. Parenti, however, is not this left commentator, and this book is evidence of how out of touch he is.

Parenti is no better than the conservatives who lionize Ronald Reagan and make apologies for anything that any Republican does. He uses all of the same tricks of far right but in service of the far left. And by far left, I mean the communist, paranoid, conspiracy-theory left.

Parenti, to put it bluntly, is an apologist for communism. If you read Parenti, you will be forced to believe that communist nations such as the old USSR were really workers' paradises and utopias of enlightened policy and good governance. He is happy to point out the excesses of right wing creeps such as Pinocchet and various US-supported dictators in Africa, but he refuses to see any flaws in such genocidal communist monsters as Stalin or Pol Pot. He glosses over the awful repression that these creeps foisted upon Jews, dissenters, intellectuals, the clergy, etc.

If we want to get beyond the tired left-right divide, we need writers who are willing to take on the icons of both the left and right and give credit to policies which work, regardless of the ideological source of those ideas. Parenti's most recent work, "To Kill a Nation", praises Milosevic!

No one who is not already a communist will be swayed by his arguments.

The media is a weapon. And in order to exist safely in this world, people must be armed with the knowledge that Michael Parenti exposes in INVENTING REALITY. In a world where people are manipulated and miseducated by the news media, every high school student should have this book in his/her current events class. It is a powerful read with an excellent empirical background. Workers and intellectuals alike need such a book if they are ever to improve this world.

I've followed Michael around on his lecture circuit, and recently had a chance to read this book. Michael does an excellent job of exposing the "free" media for what it really is. He goes into detail on the censorship of newspapers, journalists, and the ridiculous right wing slant that is prevalent in the news today.

Some of his viewpoints are a little sketchy, but most of them hit home and make a terrible amount of sense. I can safely say that Michael has made a believer out of me. I look forward to reading his other books.

The United States along with other western powers demonized the Serbs and socialist Yugoslavia. Being accused of running death camps (which was a fraudulent charge), and perpetrating a systematic policy of mass rape and mass murder, the idea the Serbs were little more than monsters was inculcated into the minds of citizens throughout the entire industrialized world. In this incredible dissection of the Yugoslavian conflict, Parenti proves the corporate capitalist press (NY Times, AP, Washinton Post, BBC, major TV networks, etc.) rarely wavered in their goal of demonizing the Serbs while virtually ignoring atrocities committed by the pseudo-fascist Croatian forces and Bosnian Muslim forces. As To Kill a Nation points out, Croatian forces massacred Serb civilians fleeing for their lives into Bosnia. At the time Croatia was headed by that minimizer of the Jewish Holocaust: Tudjman - a strong ally of the United States.

Parenti makes it clear the reason Milosevic and the Serbs were and are the targets for demonization is because they were the most resolute against allowing the FRY to be laid open and exploited by international investors, and the IMF and World Bank.

To Kill a Nation unearths fascinating sources pointing out the integral role western intelligence agencies played in financing the secessionist organizations during the 90s - obviously this would work to destabilize the successful mixed socialist economy of Yugoslavia. Wanting to institute free-market reforms, which have wrought misery and ruined lives throughout Eastern Europe over the past decade, the western powers hit on the concept of destabilization in order to do away with the solidarity felt by much of the FRY population.

The key quotes and sources Parenti displays are nothing short of amazing and astounding. During the siege of Sarajevo, which turned much of global opinion against the Serbs, he demonstrates that it was the Bosnian Muslim forces that consistently started the daily bombings and disallowed safe passage to civilians. There's even documentation of Bosnian Muslim snipers secretly firing on citizens in order to lay the blame on Serb forces. The highly touted "genocide" at Srebrenica and Trepca are touched on and quickly proven to be much ado about very little; that is very little compared to the sensationalistic saturation coverage the stories enjoyed. The book shows that Srebrenica and Trepca were not much more than propaganda stories aimed at manipulating public opinion.

When To Kill a Nation turns its sights to NATO's alliance with the organized mobsters, drug dealers and gun runners of the Kosovo Liberation Army, it delves into a rarely analyzed area of world affairs. Parenti astutely broaches the topic of the myriad laws broken when NATO bombed the infrastructure, social capital and political quarters of Yugoslavia. NATO's obliteration of the FRY's socialist economy served a rational class interest for western ruling elites and investors. To Kill a Nation mentions the sad fact that many well minded liberal intellectuals were suckered into jumping on the Serb and Milosevic demonization train and some even countenanced the bombing.

Parenti documents that most of the human rights abuses attributed to the Serbs were committed primarily by the Chetnik paramilitaries who often acted outside the control of top military brass. Some analysts claim the paramilitaries task was not easy due to the difficulty in distinguishing the enemy. To Kill a Nation does a masterful job in pointing out the biases and difficulties faced by the Serbs and anyone else in the FRY determined to keep democratic socialism intact. In fact it's crucial to remember Milosevic was elected in a fair and open contest.

Parenti's book may be the finest work on international politics and economics since Noam Chomsky's American Power and the New Mandarins. Written in a direct and engaging style, To Kill a Nation is one of Verso Publishing's best offerings to date.

This short book is a courageous gesture on the part of Michael Parenti; certain to anger the right, Parenti just as sharply criticizes the so-called left, taking to task the Greens, NPR and Susan Sontag just to name a few. Perhaps it is this assurance of condemnation from all sides that makes it so imperative that this book be read.

This is a horror story of course, but written with an intelligence and passion that makes the book very difficult to put down. Relying upon White House and Nato press reports, various mainstream media, first-hand accounts and his own visit to the war-torn country, Parenti attempts to tell the untold about a war, the media coverage of which has become a history of retractions and unsustained claims.

This book is as much about media as it is about politics, a fact that bares considering given some of the reviews below, several of which seem to promote an ideology rather than address the book itself. This is unfortunate given the lengths to which Parenti goes to state repeatedly that "Again, it cannot be said too many times: to reject the demonized image of Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize either nor claim that Yugoslav forces have not committed crimes. It is merely to challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia and NATO's far greater criminal onslaught" (186).

To see how Parenti goes about defending this assertion one must read the book. Academic and yet very lucidly written, the book is as unsettling as it is thought-provoking. Indeed, it is convincing, and given the recent arrest of Milosevic and continuing tensions in the region, extremely pertinent.

Parenti's book is not a historical account of Yugoslavia's conquest by the West. Few dates are mentioned and only a rough chronology is followed. Instead it's a valiant attempt to set the record straight following years of drumfire propaganda aimed at toppling the Yugoslav federation and its non-western economy. By no means, is Parenti attempting a whitewash of Milosevich, his regime, or real crimes against non-Serbs. He is combatting the vicious, one-sided campaign waged in Western media against all things Serb or Yugoslav. That NATO has finally succeeded is testament to an overwhelming military and political superiority, not to any inherent rightness in the cause, ( consider the spate of international law violated by NATO's attack). This is the burden of the book and the author handles it well, with documentation and sources outside the usual CNN-NATO axis.

Two key points are worth mention. The vaunted killing fields of Kosovo never materialized despite near hysterical reports all over Western networks. Turns out that many of these claims were based on rumor, exaggeration, or KLA mendacity. That these reports of Serb massacres were circulated as fact by an uncritical media testifies to a level of subservience to NATO war aims, which , not incidentally, work to strengthen European prospects of this same corporate media. Now that the conquest is complete, backtracking is quietly underway, but so what, the damage has been done, and more of the same cheerleading can be expected next time Western peace-keepers go after some rogue nation or crazed foreign devil.

A second point: Parenti documents terms of the Rambouillet conference, a NATO-Yugoslav diplomatic meeting that set the stage for the armed attack on Serbia. Seems this parley was sabotaged from the outset. To meet Western terms for peace, Serbia was required to permit NATO forces to occupy the country, renouncing in effect sovereignty over its own territory. In short, it was a demand Serbia could not afford not to refuse - just as NATO had calculated, and the air attack got underway against what was now portrayed as an unreasonable regime in Belgrade! (This is reminiscent of the diplomatic trickery surrounding talks between April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, prior to the Gulf War, in which Hussein was told the US had no interest in the disposition of Kuwait or its royal family, thereby setting a trap that Hussein immediately fell into.)

What should be apparent to critical observers, is that truth, goodness, and fellow feeling mean nothing when power and wealth are at stake, regardless of the regime involved. Western transnationals see an opportunity to gobble up the world economy behind a facade of "free trade" and "democracy" and, by god, they're going to do it, whether people like it or not. That's their version of democratic thinking. If this seems an exaggeration, read the book. The truth is out there, but don't expect to hear it on the six o'clock news.

I've read the other reviews here and I must say one thing: those who claim that Parenti is crying "conspiracy" have no idea what they're talking about. Perhaps the fact that this is so far-reaching and exaggerated makes them assume the extreme. Most critics of the U.S. government, from the right and left, will agree that the atrocities made in the name of capitalism (not 'democracy' as we are so often told) by the U.S. are endless and without conscience. Parenti points this out. Parenti does what the blurb on the front cover of the book contends: he gives a "Brilliant exposé of the brutal realities of U.S. Global Domination" with well founded and backing statistics.
For those who maintain that this is an opinion piece, I tell you that this is the idea that the writer intends, to expose through example- for you need not "quote" history- the true Evil that is the U.S. capitalist military machine.
Let's not get lost in scholarly exercises of citing and the endless circle of recycling the words of others. Parenti has something to say here and he says it well.

I've been reading Parenti's books for a couple of years, and seeking out his articles and lectures. Reading Against Empire was my first exposure to the man. He characterizes the United States as an Empire, in the classic sense, demolishes your ability to look at your country in any other way, and then goes on to discuss practically every aspect of US foreign and domestic policy in terms of how it serves an active and malignant Empire. His class anaylsis makes itr impossible to ever again percieve U.S. roles in world finance, war, humanitarian missions, etc the same way again. Before, I wondered why we might intervene here but not there, why a war at this time and not another, etc. Parenti cuts through the mystery and exposes again and again the class interests that drive our policy. And he does so in blunt, sometimes deadpan humor and with a remarkably clear vision. Also read his new book, Blackshirts and Reds, about fascism. And if you get a chance, order tapes of his lectures

I'm American. A born-in-the-Midwest cornfed type whom the rest of the world increasingly hates more and more. I grew up in a white middle class family. And now, thanks to Parenti, I question the relevence of it all. At what cost to my parents, my world, and my fellow humans?

Other reviewers acurately point out that not everything in the book is neatly backed up, but one can't deny the wide scope and dead on reality of the majority of the book. This book is a MUST read for anyone who lives in America and considers the American foreign policy either bad or good.

Buy it - buy it now. It will open your eyes to corporate run media, campaign reform, foreign policy, the oil industry, and why the world disdains Americans.

Marxism is a good tool for social analysis, but it is anything but science. To put one basic point on the block: the Hegelian dialectic concept 'thesis/antithesis/synthesis' is a scam (thousands of pages have been written on the negation of the negation). What really happens is social and political struggles or 'action / reaction'.
The Marxist solution to circumvent the capitalist economic cycles - plan economy - is leaving the economic power in the hands of the bureaucrats and is the 'Road to Serfdom' (Hayek).

Besides, Marxism doesn't say anything on three essential factors in the evolution of mankind: on the macroside 'demography and nationalism', and on the microside 'the nature of the individual / the genes'. Or, as L. Betzig says: 'how things really are'.
Into the bargain, it gives a black/white picture of mankind: the good prolets and the bad capitalists. Marxist observers are sometimes amazed about what happens when after a revolution the proletarians take over power in a country: the same 'slaughter and suffering' (G. Williams); first, the capitalists, then the fellow travelers and ultimately the fellows. The examples of proletarians, who became almighty, are countless. Justinian - the son of a shepherd - and his wive Theodora - a 'life' actress - (Procopius), Mrs. Mao (R. Witke), to name a few scandalous rulers. But the diehards will pretend that this kind of prolets corrupted the system and became the 'gravediggers of the revolution'.
How was it possible that the German Democratic Republic created a system where everybody spied on everybody, although - or because - only a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the population held the power strings in hand? Where the leaders too stupid? As Bert Brecht said: 'if the people don't want their leaders, why don't the leaders choose another people?' A disastrous missed opportunity (H. Mayer).

Gransci said it in other terms. He asked for an 'uomo novo'. Without genes?
Solidarity is not a basic human instinct. People will only show solidarity if there is a plus for them personally.

Michael Parenti attacks Orwell, but in his masterful 'Homage to Catalonia' he saw luminously what really happened behind the scenes. The Moscow communists were already liquidating the other leftists (A. Nin), even before the battle was ended with a catastrophic result for the left.

Why did the old USSR stop to communicate health statistics to the WHO in the nineteen seventies? When I last was in Moscow, a friend told me that in every Russian village there was a statue of Lenin, whom's arm showed the direction of history for the proletariat: a Vodka shop.

His defence of Lenin is also very controversial. Lenin was a pure antidemocrat. He considered that the members of the working class didn't comprehend the real aim of the CP in the world, and that their opinions should be discarded. The Bolshevik Party got only 18% of the votes in 1917. When they were again harshly beaten in the elections a few years later, Lenin didn't take the results into account. He created a one party state with a Politburo of 15 (fifteen) people. At the end there was only one who held all the power in his hands (see the formidable memoirs of D. Shostakovich). Chomsky is dead right: the top of the CP in the USSR wanted only power, not for the people, but for themselves. They considered that only they knew, could preach and implement the Gospel. With deadly consequences for all but one.

Michael Parenti's analysis of the situation in the US is right: democracy for the few (no proportional representation, a political duopoly controlled by the powerful), too many oligopolies (media, energy).
But for me the solution is not Marxist, but the other way round (A. Sen): more and better democracy, more free market, less oligopolies, free and more diversified media.

I felt that this book was too dogmatic. But we still need Parenti's voice.

Parenti does it again! In this book he traces brilliantly the appeal and development of the fascist movement, explaining how fascist leaders use irrational symbols to manipulate people who have very rational concerns about their diminished living standards. Parenti is one of the very few analysts who actually assesses the real economic impact of fascist governance; he proves that fascism lead to ever-greater brutalization of the workers, and a gross redistribution of wealth upward to the system's corporate benefactors. Parenti explores closely the actual record of Communist leadership; he provides a nuanced analysis that both praises the Communists for their achievements in the matter of social equity , and criticizes these states for their oppression of their people. Nonetheless, Parenti proves that even tyrants like Stalin were not quite as bad as their fascist counterparts, for every Communist leader had to constantly resist the imperialist pressures of the capitalist west. Parenti also brilliantly derides those so-called liberals who ignore the issue of class today. He points out that true progressives should be more concerned with the living conditions of working people than with some sterile, lofty, and ulimately meaningless debate over cultural issues. All in all, a very solid book; I didn't agree with everything in it, but I did agree with most of it. Parenti writes well, persuasively, and coherently. His writing comes as a much needed rejoinder to the rightist and centrist blather which currently dominates TV punditry, newspaper editorials, the mainstream news magazines, et al.

Parenti shares his most current thoughts on fascism, socialism, communism and capitalism in an unique and personal ways, without apologies. Although it's true that the book rehases running dispute between leninism and anarchism, it does carry a sense of intellectual honesty in defending and explaning his political convictions -- especially when most leftists find it now more opportune to be seen as a liberal socialist, even if their personal histories don't confirm such wish.

Parenti has always been out there defending revolutions and revolutionaries, although one can question his personal emphasis on the russian revolution and east european countries over other third world liberations. At the same time, he is quick to point out genunine concerns with the bureaucratic natures of soviet states and their ineffieciencies. Although this is similar to other liberal socialists, he distingishes himself from the pack by showing a truer appreciation and understanding to the difficulties of revolutions within the international domination of us imperialism as best exemplified by the sandanista revolution. The book devotes a whole chapter on "communist wonderland" on this subject. After reading this chapter one cannot honestly call him a communist apologist.

Ironically when the current political tide encourages more leftist intellectuals to be more critical of communist revolutions, Parenti refuses the opportunity to step in with the pack. There is a sense of sincerity in his uncompromising stance as one of the last remaining soldiers down in the tranches of fighting capitalism and imperialism.

I really did try to read this book, but the theme was apparent after about 30 pages. It is filled with venom and hate. There is no rational discussion of issues, just a long list of complaints because the world is not perfect.

I am extremely ticked off that I had to buy this book; it was for a core required government course. This had to be the biggest waiste of ink and paper ever! Talk about a fruitloop with a warped perception of reality. He would always use dumb pinko commi words like "plutocracy", "mccarthyism, "red squads", or some other tree hugging trash talk. He even went so far as to state that our own military uses electromagnetic mind control from satalites (p. 82)! People like this should not be allowed to breed. I hope he steps out in front of a huge speeding bus!

A firend who is a political science grad student advised I read this. I was impressed by the thorough analysis of The American version of Realpolitik presented in Mr. Parenti's book. His writing style is clear and direct as this book was intended to be a polital science textbook. He presents facts about the realities of class and the efforts of the existing ruling "elite" to maitain their grip on power here and abroad. Unlike other reviewers here, I didn't feel Mr.Parenti was "America bashing" or that he "hates buisness". On the contrary, I think his intent here (and in other writings I've since read)is to inform people and encourage them to use this knowledge to get more involved with democracy. He is shows that democracy and capitalism need not automatically go hand in hand.
Also, other reviews here question the sources in this book. Apparently they discount ALL the sources here because of the use of some left-wing texts. Obviously we're expected to believe only right-wing journalism... Hope you enjoy this book!