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Rating: 
Summary: Iconoclastic and brilliant scholarship
Review: Edward Herman, famous for his iconoclastic studies (e.g. Manufacturing Consent)with Noam Chomsky, published this book in 1982, though its themes very much apply today. Herman shows that the U.S. mass media almost always accept the U.S. government version of events without question, especially in foreign affairs and cater to its propaganda needs. Herman explains why it is that fascist military regimes in the third world from Indonesia to Brazil to Guatemala to Uraguay to the Philipines to Chile that have often been installed and given heavy aid by the United States and murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people, often in extremely gruesome fashion, and yet very little coverage has been given to their abuses, despite massive evidence presented by church groups and human rights organizations, refugees and many others, in contrast to the massive daily coverage of the injustices suffered by dissidents in the Soviet block, the official enemy of the U.S. government and much of big business. He examines why it is that, to give one of many examples, Brazillian labor leader Luis De Silva can be referred to at one point by a New York Times editorial as "the Lech Walesa of Brazil" and yet that same paper can devote very little coverage to the gross injustices he suffered at the hands of a U.S. client government and yet devoted massive daily coverage to the injustices suffered by Walesa in Communist Poland. He examines why it is that while unions were being eliminated and union leaders and members being executed by the thousands in Colombia, Guatemala, Chile and elsewhere, the United States government and its allies and the U.S. media, can launch into a hocus pocus of holy horror at the far less murderous repression of the Solidarity union in Poland. He examines why it is that the media, when they deign to look at the terror in the U.S. backed client states at all, almost never attribute its source to U.S. training and supply of the military officials who conduct it, instead asserting that the client state government is unfortunately unable to control the death squads or rogue segments of the military, despite massive evidence that these elements are firmly under the control of the client government and being directed by it, or perhaps implying that the U.S. is an innocent bystander looking helplessly over a country that has no history of democracy, is prone to violence, etc; he examines why it is that the media rarely focus on the nature of the massive U.S. training of the Latin American militaries where not much emphasis is placed on military training but much emphasis is placed on ideological training, ingraining the idea in these already reactionary forces that any sort of reform movement, however mild, that seeks to help the oppressed peasantry, establish union rights, and so on, is by definition part of a hellish conspiracy of the Soviet Union and Cuba to overthrow Western Civilization, and so on. They are taught that communism is completely evil and that the United States and those who ally with it are the forces of virtue and civilization and that since the popular movements (unions, peasant self-help organizations,etc.) are by definition, not indiginous movements seeking to fight oppression and misery inflicted by very primitive oligarchies, but agents of world Communism, any means necessary can be used to eliminate them. They also tend to be taught advanced techniques of torture. He examines why the extensive CIA-backed and protected terror network of the Cuban exile community (e.g. Omega 7, once described by the FBI as the "most dangerous terrorist organization in the U.S. today" yet never prosecuted or investigated; or Orlando Bosch who escaped from prison in Venezuela after blowing up a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in 1976, and committing many other crimes) is never examined by the U.S. media. He examines why it is that South Africa's mass murder in its U.S.-backed illegal occupation of Namibia (such as its massacre of over 600 people at Kassinga in May 1978) and murderous invasion of Angola were rarely condemned by the media, though Cuba's perfectly legal responsive military operations on behalf of the Angolan government, with an extremely reluctant Soviet Union in the background, was violently condemned. He examines why it is that the media never has looked into the famous "Operation Condor" began in the mid-1970's on the initiative of Pinochet's Chile which allowed the various intelligence services of the American backed terror and torture regimes (Brazil, Chile, Uraguay, Argentina, Paraguay, etc.) to operate in each other's countries to search for their own exiled dissidents to kidnap and murder, whose victims seem to run into the hundreds at the very least. He examines, very extensively, why it is that almost all of the U.S. client regimes have instituted economic policies that have resulted in vast increases in malnutrition, unemployment, child mortality, and so on, and great inceases in poverty, yet these regimes are often refered to in the U.S. media as having produced an "economic miracle." He examines why it was that such bizarre terrorism "experts" were given such grave attention in the U.S. media in the 80's, particularly the late Claire Sterling with her methods of scholarship that would make an intelligent ten year old die laughing and her amusing use of the intelligence services of apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile as "sources." Or General Jan Sejna, who according to Sterling fled Czechoslovakia, as the Soviet army invaded in 1968, but who actually left his country after being implicated in a corruption scandal during Dubcek's brief "Prague Spring" government that the Soviets overthrew , with his wild tales of the Soviets training terrorists in his country for worldwide subversion with methods of scholarship and evidence scarcely more compelling than Sterling's. There is much else in this book that I didn't mention above, including a couple of pages devoted to Israel and what one of its former prime ministers, Moshe Sharett, referred to as its "scared terrorism." Once or twice, as during his devastating critique of the economic situation in the American client regimes, Herman gets a bit too heavy, but those periods are brief and rare.
Rating:
Summary: Iconoclastic and brilliant scholarship
Review: Edward Herman, famous for his iconoclastic studies (e.g. Manufacturing Consent)with Noam Chomsky, published this book in 1982, though its themes very much apply today. Herman shows that the U.S. mass media almost always accept the U.S. government version of events without question, especially in foreign affairs and cater to its propaganda needs. Herman explains why it is that fascist military regimes in the third world from Indonesia to Brazil to Guatemala to Uraguay to the Philipines to Chile that have often been installed and given heavy aid by the United States and murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people, often in extremely gruesome fashion, and yet very little coverage has been given to their abuses, despite massive evidence presented by church groups and human rights organizations, refugees and many others, in contrast to the massive daily coverage of the injustices suffered by dissidents in the Soviet block, the official enemy of the U.S. government and much of big business. He examines why it is that, to give one of many examples, Brazillian labor leader Luis De Silva can be referred to at one point by a New York Times editorial as "the Lech Walesa of Brazil" and yet that same paper can devote very little coverage to the gross injustices he suffered at the hands of a U.S. client government and yet devoted massive daily coverage to the injustices suffered by Walesa in Communist Poland. He examines why it is that while unions were being eliminated and union leaders and members being executed by the thousands in Colombia, Guatemala, Chile and elsewhere, the United States government and its allies and the U.S. media, can launch into a hocus pocus of holy horror at the far less murderous repression of the Solidarity union in Poland. He examines why it is that the media, when they deign to look at the terror in the U.S. backed client states at all, almost never attribute its source to U.S. training and supply of the military officials who conduct it, instead asserting that the client state government is unfortunately unable to control the death squads or rogue segments of the military, despite massive evidence that these elements are firmly under the control of the client government and being directed by it, or perhaps implying that the U.S. is an innocent bystander looking helplessly over a country that has no history of democracy, is prone to violence, etc; he examines why it is that the media rarely focus on the nature of the massive U.S. training of the Latin American militaries where not much emphasis is placed on military training but much emphasis is placed on ideological training, ingraining the idea in these already reactionary forces that any sort of reform movement, however mild, that seeks to help the oppressed peasantry, establish union rights, and so on, is by definition part of a hellish conspiracy of the Soviet Union and Cuba to overthrow Western Civilization, and so on. They are taught that communism is completely evil and that the United States and those who ally with it are the forces of virtue and civilization and that since the popular movements (unions, peasant self-help organizations,etc.) are by definition, not indiginous movements seeking to fight oppression and misery inflicted by very primitive oligarchies, but agents of world Communism, any means necessary can be used to eliminate them. They also tend to be taught advanced techniques of torture. He examines why the extensive CIA-backed and protected terror network of the Cuban exile community (e.g. Omega 7, once described by the FBI as the "most dangerous terrorist organization in the U.S. today" yet never prosecuted or investigated; or Orlando Bosch who escaped from prison in Venezuela after blowing up a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in 1976, and committing many other crimes) is never examined by the U.S. media. He examines why it is that South Africa's mass murder in its U.S.-backed illegal occupation of Namibia (such as its massacre of over 600 people at Kassinga in May 1978) and murderous invasion of Angola were rarely condemned by the media, though Cuba's perfectly legal responsive military operations on behalf of the Angolan government, with an extremely reluctant Soviet Union in the background, was violently condemned. He examines why it is that the media never has looked into the famous "Operation Condor" began in the mid-1970's on the initiative of Pinochet's Chile which allowed the various intelligence services of the American backed terror and torture regimes (Brazil, Chile, Uraguay, Argentina, Paraguay, etc.) to operate in each other's countries to search for their own exiled dissidents to kidnap and murder, whose victims seem to run into the hundreds at the very least. He examines, very extensively, why it is that almost all of the U.S. client regimes have instituted economic policies that have resulted in vast increases in malnutrition, unemployment, child mortality, and so on, and great inceases in poverty, yet these regimes are often refered to in the U.S. media as having produced an "economic miracle." He examines why it was that such bizarre terrorism "experts" were given such grave attention in the U.S. media in the 80's, particularly the late Claire Sterling with her methods of scholarship that would make an intelligent ten year old die laughing and her amusing use of the intelligence services of apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile as "sources." Or General Jan Sejna, who according to Sterling fled Czechoslovakia, as the Soviet army invaded in 1968, but who actually left his country after being implicated in a corruption scandal during Dubcek's brief "Prague Spring" government that the Soviets overthrew , with his wild tales of the Soviets training terrorists in his country for worldwide subversion with methods of scholarship and evidence scarcely more compelling than Sterling's. There is much else in this book that I didn't mention above, including a couple of pages devoted to Israel and what one of its former prime ministers, Moshe Sharett, referred to as its "scared terrorism." Once or twice, as during his devastating critique of the economic situation in the American client regimes, Herman gets a bit too heavy, but those periods are brief and rare.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and very timely book
Review: I was interested in this book some years back, read parts of it, never finished it. One of those sorts
of books, the kind that would be one of 10 - 20 I would have out at any one time while trying to
discover and better understand the world in which we live. Now it is November 28, 2001 and
America has been victim to one of the largest terrorist attacks in history. I decided to look again into
some of the writings on the war on terrorism which actually began long before 9/11/2001. The Real Terror network is a chilling book. Ed Herman is an expert on terrorism if ever there was
one. Problem is he is not judgmental in his use of the term, as the media then and today tend to
be, so he is brushed aside from the mainstream (certainly have not seen him interviewed on TV
during our newest crisis!). Early on in the book he describes terrorism as the use of violence to
achieve political goals. With this as his starting point, he goes on to examine various activities of
what he calls retail terrorists (ie. small Soviet sponsored, the PLO, Libya etc) vs wholesale
terrorism (ie state terrorism). Herman's basic premise is that the terrorism carried out with US support in South Africa, Angola,
Cuba, and by Israel far outweigh that carried out by the folks actually branded as terrorists, the
ones we are in the process of "smoking out" today. He goes on to provide a wealth of examples
of US support for terrorism which is documented in a very scholarly way. There is also a very
effective chapter examining the role of the media in defining who we generally think of as
terrorists, by downplaying or completely ignoring our own actions while repeatedly running
stories on enemy terrorism. Basically he is describing the propaganda model he later flushes out
with co-author Noam Chomsky in "manufacturing Consent"
I would suggest that this book be dusted off and read by anyone who has the stomach. It is not a
pretty picture, or an easy read for that matter. It is not overly long book, and I think that if more
people were exposed to truths like the ones Herman outlines, more people would protest, and
likely the world would be a better, at least safer place.
Rating: 
Summary: Is terror justified?
Review: This is an essential read, but note the date - written in 1982, not 1998 as stated on the Amazon.com website. It provides great insight into US foreign policy, particularly in South America up to 1982. You can almost begin to identify with the 'retail terrorist' but then it's the 'state terrorist' that emerges as the real problem. It also makes you realize the enormous extent to which the 'american people' have been duped by the covert operations of Presidents veiled in Hollywood style PR. When I see this kind of well researched content in the New York Times or the Economist, I'll believe we are on the right track! By accident, I read the "Marcos Dynasty" after this. Enough said!
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