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.
The United States is immersed in a political St. Vitus’s dance typical of empires in convulsion. The confident colossus that watched its arch-rival disintegrate from 1989-1991 now has its highest office occupied by a malevolent clown enabled by supporters befitting a casting call for a Hieronymous Bosch panel. The liberal class gnashes its teeth and blames Trump, the Koch brothers, the Tea Party. But the shock is hardly credible. The current political trap befits a country that internalized its own Cold War propaganda campaign from 1945-1991. The unrelenting flow of messages aimed at keeping Americans fearful and accommodating debased our ...
Recommended alternative reading list on the Yugoslav studies not used by mainstream corporative Western mass-media and top Western universities dealing with global security, world politics and international relations. Reading proposed readers below you can complete picture on the Yugoslav studies out of the official Western approach.March Pogrom 2004 Book and Photo EvidenceKOSOVSKA GOLGOTA Intervju 198820 Principal Misconceptions on Kosovo IssueThe Srebrenica Massacre Evidence Context Politics Edward S Herman Phillip CorwinLista Diane Budisavljevic 1941 Do 1945 by Владислав Б. Сотировић/Vladislav B. SotirovićJosip Broz Tito Bez Maske! by Владислав Б. Сотировић/Vladislav B. SotirovićHayden Mass Killings and Images of Genocide in Bosnia by ...
Trump the Anti-Globalist Champion of the People?Many Americans who’ve been supporting President-elect Trump see him as the populist leader who will save America from ruin. Trump supporters have been unfairly marginalized and pigeonholed by the MSM broad stroke as white supremacy extremists bent on plunging America back into a new Jim Crowism era and a second Civil War along with a growing number of angry, uneducated, disenfranchised blue collar, mostly white male redneck loser types. Despite a spike in racist graffiti and vandalism since the election, this gross overgeneralization is the Hillary/Soros/Rothschild/MSM’s desperate attempt to discredit Trump’s victory while Soros ...
On February 5, Military Times published a report stating that Washington has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The investigation reveals that in Afghanistan in 2016 alone, the U.S. air force carried out at least 456 bombings. The open-source report published by the Air Force Command doesn’t include these figures.According to the Military Times, the information was obtained from “Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups” and it shows that much of what the Pentagon has disclosed may be misleading or simply ...
On Monday, February 8 (2016), the human rights organization Amnesty International published a 48-page report accusing the Syrian government of mass executions and tortures in Saydnaya prison. According to the watchdog, between September 2011 and December 2015, an estimated 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed.The methods used by the report to count the alleged ‘victims’ is quite contradictory. Amnesty International admits it had little direct evidence for its claims. Instead, the report was based on conjectures and the words of former prison detainees and commentators who are linked to the Syrian opposition and have lived outside the country for ...
Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis points out the latest travesty of the Western media: 59,000 stories on Auschwitz, three on Jasenovac. As if the third-largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Europe simply never existed. Franjo Tudjman certainly thought so, and it appears the current Croatian leadership shares his "historical" perspective.Contemporary German estimates of Serbs murdered by the Ustasha (in Jasenovac and elsewhere) ranged as high as 750,000. Wiesenthal center uses the number of 600,000. Serbian researchers have spoken of up to 700,000 victims. Modern revisionists, Croat and otherwise, talk of 30-100,000, at most. Among them is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which ...
The American Civil War The American Civil War (1861−1865) was a military conflict between the northern and the southern states of the USA which initially started as a political-economic revolt and desire for the independence by the southern states which created their own Confederacy not recognized by Washington. However, very soon the conflict was transformed into the war for the abolition of the slavery within the whole territory of the USA. In the first half of the 19th century, there was an increasing number of personalities mostly from the industrial northern states who called for the abolition of the slavery but ...
The crimes committed by the US against the people of Korea in the course of the Korean War but also in its aftermath are unprecedented in modern history.“We Killed Off – What – Twenty Percent of the Population. We Burned Down every Town in North Korea…”The above quotation is from General Curtis Lemay, who coordinated the bombing campaign (1950-53)Who is a Threat to Global Security? The US or the DPRK?The public perception of the entire population of North Korea is that the US is a threat to their national security.During the Korean War, the DPRK lost more than 25% of ...
The Islamic State is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.Al Qaeda Affiliated Entities are “Intelligence Assets. Instruments of US Intelligence. The Global War on Terrorism is a fabrication used to justify a war of conquest. The Jihadist terrorists are “Made in America”. They are instruments of US intelligence, yet they are presented to public opinion as “enemies of America”.IntroductionThe Obama administration has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a Worldwide military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.The Pentagon’s global military design is one ...
Two months ago, hundreds of thousands of Chileans somberly marked the 40thanniversary of their nation’s September 11th terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other ...
Historical backgroundHistorical Poland (in fact, the Polish-Lithuanian Republic of Two Nations) became divided during the three partitions in 1772, 1793, and 1795 between the Kingdom of Prussia, the Habsburg Monarchy (later Austrian Empire and Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy), and the Russian Empire. At that time, the rulers of all these three states which divided Poland-Lithuania (the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) have been by ethnic origin the Germans – Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria. It means that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (established in 1569 by the Union of Lublin), ...
Sunday January 24th 2016 marks the anniversary of the death of one of the most lionized leaders in the Western world: Sir Winston Churchill.The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has called Churchill “the greatest ever Prime Minister”, and Britons have recently voted him as the greatest Briton to have ever lived.The story that British schoolbooks tell children about Churchill is of a British Bulldog, with unprecedented moral bravery and patriotism. He, who defeated the Nazis during World War II and spread civilisation to indigenous people from all corners of the globe. Historically, nothing could be further from the truth.To ...
The grandees of the Republican Party are on the ropes. Donald Trump has them by the balls, but, even without Trump, they would be in what Bush the Father would call deep “do-do.”Any Republican candidate for President whom two-thirds of the electorate could abide would be anathema to the one-third that Republicans have recruited into their rank and file. Mitt Romney was the final straw.The establishment’s situation is so pitiful that even Chris Christie is starting to look good to them. If his candidacy survives into the Spring, late night TV comedians will rejoice; others, not so much.Ted Cruz remains ...
Last week’s announcement of a record-breaking US aid package for Israel underscores how dangerously foolish and out-of-touch is our interventionist foreign policy. Over the next ten years, the US taxpayer will be forced to give Israel some $38 billion dollars in military aid. It is money we cannot afford going to a country that needs no assistance to maintain its status as the most powerful military in the Middle East.All US foreign aid is immoral and counterproductive. As I have often said, it is money taken from poor people in the US and sent to rich people overseas. That is ...
In the years from 882 to 1242 the first and original national state organization of the Russians – the Kievan Russia (not Kyivan Rusia or Kyiv Rus’!) became directly and indirectly subject to external political influences by several external political units of the time. According to the official historiographical traditions (mainly of Western origin), Kievan Russia was established and governed by the Nordic Vikings (“Varyagi/Varangians/Rus’”) with the Dnieper as its axis with Kiev as capital and later received Christianity of the Eastern (Greek) type from the Byzantium in the south and was finally conquered by the barbaric Mongol Tartars from ...
One of the most complicated and frustrating aspects of operating a global capitalist empire is maintaining the fiction that it doesn’t exist. Virtually every action you take has to be carefully recontextualized or otherwise spun for public consumption. Every time you want to bomb or invade some country to further your interests, you have to mount a whole PR campaign. You can’t even appoint a sadistic torture freak to run your own coup-fomenting agency, or shoot a few thousand unarmed people you’ve imprisoned in a de facto ghetto, without having to do a big song and dance about “defending democracy” ...
Read the opinion by Noam Chomsky about POTUS (Presidents of USA) after the Second World War in the light of the Nuremberg laws.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"]
Kosovo Muslim Albanian jihad fighters in the Middle East as ISIS members (2016)How accurate is the theory that there are tragic events of exceptional strength that really shape the identity of a nation? How is this happening and what if we do not learn a lesson out of those experiences?– The prominent French writer Renan wrote in his lecture “What is a Nation?” that people are often connected by memories of shared suffering, and Serbs are no exception. Today, when Yugoslavia is no more, there is no reason why Jasenovac should not be brought back to the center of the ...
IntroductionThe goals of this article are: 1) to investigate the role of the revived Patriarchate of Peć in Serbian and Balkan history?; and 2) to explore and present the results of investigation of the problems with respect to: a) the role of the Serbian Church during the first decades of the Ottoman occupation of Serbian lands in the process of the creation of a Serbian national identity; b) Serbian-Turkish relations in the second half of the 16th century; and c) the reasons for Serbian disloyalty towards the Ottoman government at the turn of the 17th century.The article addresses the reasons ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & 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.
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.
