Remembering Edward Herman: Explains the Role of Media Propaganda in Justifying War
Herman discussed the disgraceful demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russophobia, the New York Times playing a leading role, inventing nonexistent threats, ignoring US-led NATO “expansion up to the Russian borders and first-strike-threat placement of anti-missile weapons in Eastern Europe,” along with endless wars of aggression against sovereign independent states threatening no one [...]
On November 11, distinguished scholar, political economist, media analyst/critic, peace champion Ed Herman passed away at age 92.
It was fittingly on the 99th anniversary of WW I’s end. Endless wars followed “the war to end all wars” – a legacy of mass slaughter and destruction Herman deplored, championing elusive world peace.
Along with his friends and family, I mourn his passing, a valued friend and colleague, a contributor to my 2014 book, titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III.”
He and other distinguished contributors made the book successful, published in Russia and France.
Ed Herman’s writing inspired my own. His books and many others by distinguished authors launched my second career – following years in small business.
His writing on Srebrenica explained what I earlier called more myth than massacre, saying:
“(E)vidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8,000 men and boys were executed, has always been problematic, to say the least…”
“(T)he ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars…”
“(T)he link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent.”
In his book “The Politics of Genocide, co-written with David Peterson, the authors explained that genocides in Kosovo and Rwanda were used by the West to advance its geopolitical/economic agenda.
Manufacturing Consent, co-authored by Noam Chomsky, was Herman’s best remembered work, his masterwork, mostly written by him.
It explained the “propaganda model,” controlling the public message by filter(ing) (disturbing truths), leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.
Today’s media are in crisis, free and open societies at risk by mass-produced fiction substituting for vital facts – alternative spaces the only sources of real news and information, mostly online.
Herman’s message and presence will be sorely missed, his spirit immortal. His last hurrah tour de force Monthly Review essay critiqued the deplorable state of today’s major media, saying:
Establishment “publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting” – calling dissenting viewpoints “fake news.”
“(T)hey…provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.”
New York Times “(f)ake news on Russia (dates) at least as far as the 1917 revolution.” It rages on steroids today.
Herman’s essay covered an array of important issues, including the CIA’s 1954 coup, toppling Guatemala’s democratic government, NYT and other media propaganda supporting what happened.
He explained Times fake news during the Vietnam War, the attempted 1981 papal assassination, the purported “missile gap” between America and Russia based on Big Lies, and so-called “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
Media propaganda sanitized war, suppressing the country’s rape and destruction, its balkanization for easier Western control.
Herman discussed the disgraceful demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russophobia, the New York Times playing a leading role, inventing nonexistent threats, ignoring US-led NATO “expansion up to the Russian borders and first-strike-threat placement of anti-missile weapons in Eastern Europe,” along with endless wars of aggression against sovereign independent states threatening no one.
He ended his detailed essay, saying Trump administration actions “deal(t) a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia.”
“The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party” continue preventing world peace.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) called Ed Herman a “master of dissent.”
His life’s work was dedicated to inspiring new generations to work for the society he envisioned – moral, righteous, free, just, egalitarian at peace.
Originally published on 2017-11-16
About the author: Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!
Donate to Support Us
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Ema Miljkovic-Bojanic, M. A.Institute of History ofSerbian Academy of Sciences and ArtsBelgrade, 2000Malcolm’s Apology of the “Pax Ottomana” (Ab)using of historiography and historical facts for political ends is not a novelty introduced towards the end of the twentieth century. Its instances have been known throughout history, so that “practically there is not a single epoch of human history that was not controlled – by the Church, state, nation, party, leadership…” But precisely at a time when historiography seemed to be getting rid, at least partly, of the grip of “supervision” and when a critical approach was getting the upper hand, the ...
In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression, which killed 7,000 U.S. servicemen and at least 210,000 civilians, displaced more than 10 million people from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently is to be given the Thayer Award ...
Remember NATO's aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from March 24th to June 10th, 1999 when several principles and articles of the Charter of United Nations were blatantly violated by the NATO's gangsters led by the US' bandits.Serbia is the only country in the whole world that was bombarded by Germany (1941), the US/UK (1944), and NATO (1999).Here, you can see a basic photo collection of the event:PHOTO COLLECTIONOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSaveSave
After 17 bloody years, the longest war in US history continues without relent or purpose in Afghanistan.There, a valiant, fiercely-independent people, the Pashtun (Pathan) mountain tribes, have battled the full might of the US Empire to a stalemate that has so far cost American taxpayers $4 trillion, and 2,371 dead and 20,320 wounded soldiers. No one knows how many Afghans have died. The number is kept secret.Pashtun tribesmen in the Taliban alliance and their allies are fighting to oust all foreign troops from Afghanistan and evict the western-imposed and backed puppet regime in Kabul that pretends to be the nation’s ...
Professor Noam Chomsky said it would be “no small trick” for the Ferguson protests to turn into an anti-racism and social justice movement, considering America’s founding principles are slavery and the extermination of the indigenous population. In a sweeping interview covering everything from Iraq and Syria to China, capitalism, and the protests in Ferguson, MIT linguistics professor Chomsky told GRITtv’s Laura Flanders that events in Ferguson and the protests that have followed show how little race relations in the United States have advanced since the end of the Civil War.“This is a very racist society,” Chomsky said. “It’s pretty shocking. ...
State frontiers are established by human beingsand may be changed by human beings.Adolf Hitler. Mein KampfDiplomacy, with all the conventions of its forms,recognizes only real facts.Charles de GaullePart OneAll of Adolf Hitler’s actions, from the time he rose to power in 1933 until 1939, could be described as one triumph after another. He met each challenge he faced: he took over as head of the country, returned Germany’s lost territories without a struggle, and was given permission from England and France to rearm. But one further task lay before him, and failure now would make his previous achievements almost pointless. ...
IntroductionThis article deals with the question of political and human/minority rights in the region of Kosovo & Metohija twenty years after the „2004 March Pogrom“ and twenty-five years after NATO's military aggression on Serbia and Montenegro and occupation of the region. An importance of this research topic is in fact that for the first time in European history, a terrorist-style and mafia-ruled (quasi)independent state was created by a full diplomatic, political, economic, military, and financial sponsorship by the West under the umbrella of the NATO's and the EU's protective administration. The precedence of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence in February 2008 already ...
For some time the criminal activities of the terrorist organization “Islamic State” (ISIS) seemed to have faded into the shadows. It seemed that this organization in the near future will be broken tie with due to the “heroic” American bombing. However, the ISIS like a fabulous hydra, who immediately has a new head grown in place of a severed one, revived and made further impressive gains.The capture of ancient Palmyra in Syria and the important city Ramadi, the main city of the Sunni province Anbar, located by the way just 100 kilometres far from Baghdad, made the world’s media and ...
This article was first published on October 19, 2014This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations.In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As ...
The American taxpayers have been fleeced for almost seventy years by a so-called «intelligence» agency that has systematically violated the US Constitution, broken practically every federal law on the books, and penetrated virtually every facet of American life. The Central Intelligence Agency’s creation was bemoaned by its creator, President Harry S Truman, who, in a fit of personal angst following the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, wrote in a newspaper column,“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations… I, therefore, would like to see the ...
Southern Serbia’s autonomous province of Kosovo and Metochia (KosMet) has been subject to a gradual, but a permanent change of its demographic content during the time of Titoslavia (Socialist Yugoslavia, 1945−1991). Three principal factors were crucial to the drastic demographic change in this Serbian province in favor of ethnic (Muslim) Albanians and at the expense of ethnic (Christian Orthodox) Serbs and Montenegrins.Demographic explosionFirst and the most important has been the demographic explosion, due to the enormous birth rate of Albanians. In the situation when this trend on the global scale was in the opposite direction, with even African countries diminishing ...
The official end of the Cold War era in 1989 brought during the first coming years a kind of international optimism that the idea of the „end of history“ really could be realized as it was a belief in no reason for the geopolitical struggles between the most powerful states. The New World Order, spoken out firstly by M. Gorbachev in his address to the UN on December 7th, 1988 was originally seen as the order of equal partnership in world politics reflecting „radically different international circumstances after the Cold War“.[1]Unfortunately, the Cold War era finished without the „end of ...
This essay is inspired by Professor James Petras’s article, describing that the US never wins wars despite trillions of investments in her war budget and obvious military superiority.Professor Petras is of course right, the United States is currently engaged in seven bloody wars around the globe (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) and has not been winning one, including WWII. The question is: Why is that?To these wars, you may want to add the totally destructive and human rights adverse war that literally slaughters unarmed civilians, including thousands of children, in an open-air prison, Gaza, the US proxy war ...
“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!” President Salvador Allende’s farewell speech, 11 September 1973.“It’s hard to find someone with the fighting spirit, courage and the story of Allende. He was a man who actually had the branded name in history: democratically the left came ...
As we can see from the local conflicts of the past few decades, terrorist groups are able to control large territories only if they get outside support and gain initial access to military infrastructure. During the 1990s, Chechen separatists were receiving weapons from Soviet troops stationed in the Chechen Republic, as well as assistance coming from across the Georgian border until the Russian forces managed to cut it off. The Kosovo separatists enjoyed the open support of the West and received regular arms supplies from Albania. The Syrian "liberation movements" have been fighting the legitimate Assad regime and its allied ...
As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the “Gala Dinner with keynote speech”, she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, “Adopt a Muj.” “I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and being asked, ‘Have you adopted a muj?” Cobban told me. “Each one had pledged money to sponsor a member of the Afghan mujahedin in the name ...
On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today. Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: “What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her?”The ...
Harry Truman surprised Americans with his call for European-style government guaranteed health care for all, Johnson with the extent of the Great Society reforms, and even Nixon with the avalanche of regulatory legislation and social spending he approved, outperforming Johnson on a number of “Keynesian” fronts. Hillary Clinton will offer no such surprises. Her consistent record in the context of the Party’s rightward gallop allows us to infer with iron confidence what we can expect from the Monstress on both the foreign and domestic fronts.Her coming onslaught against the working population combines neoliberal austerity with some of the dominant strategies ...
PrefaceThe “Macedonian Question” is today actual for several reasons of whom two are of the fundamental importance: 1. The Albanian secession in the FYROM; and 2. The Greek dispute with the FYROM authorities over several issues.[1] For the matter of illustration, for instance, Greece is so far blocking Macedonia’s joining NATO and the EU because of an on-going dispute between the FYROM and Greece. The main disputable issue is the title of “Macedonia” used in the country’s Constitution in the form of the official state-name as the Republic of Macedonia.[2] When the ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia voted for independence ...
It was fittingly on the 99th anniversary of WW I’s end. Endless wars followed “the war to end all wars” – a legacy of mass slaughter and destruction Herman deplored, championing elusive world peace.
