After the Cataclysm


Book Description

Volume two of the influential study of US foreign policy during the Cold War—and the media’s manipulative coverage—by the authors of Manufacturing Consent. First published in 1979, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s two-volume work, The Political Economy of Human Rights, is a devastating analysis of the United States government’s suppression of human rights and support of authoritarianism in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the 1960s and 70s. Still one of the most comprehensive studies of the subject, it demonstrates how government obscured its role in torture, murder and totalitarianism abroad with the aid of the news media. In the first volume, Chomsky and Herman focus on US terror in Indochina. In volume two, After the Cataclysm, the authors examine the immediate aftermath of those actions, with special focus on the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia. Throughout, the authors track the media response to the US interventions—a mixture of willful silence and Orwellian misrepresentation.




After the Cataclysm


Book Description




After the Cataclysm


Book Description

With a new preface by the authors, this companion book to The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism dissects the aftermath of the war in Southeast Asia, the refugee problem, the Vietnam/Cambodia conflict, and the Pol Pot regime.




The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism


Book Description

Analyzes U.S. policy in Latin America, Asia, and Africa media and the role of the media in misreporting these policies.




Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences


Book Description

Atrocity fabrication – the invention and reporting of atrocities committed by an adversary without knowledge that they ever occurred – has a centuries-long history at the heart of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion. Its use can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets, transforming in the public eye wars of unprovoked aggression into wars of liberation of the oppressed, or turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure abusive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions. As it plays a large and growing role in global conflict in the 21st century understanding atrocity fabrication and the consistent means by and ends to which it has been used has become crucial to comprehending geopolitical events in the present day. This book elucidates the seldom explored but central role played by atrocity fabrication in eleven major conflicts from the 1950s to the present day: from Korea, Vietnam and Cuba during the Cold War to Iraq, Libya and the emerging Sino-U.S. cold war more recently. It highlights the many variations of atrocity fabrication, the strong consistencies in how atrocity fabrication is used, and the consequences it has for the populations of the targeted countries, The book demonstrates the roles played by media and both government and non-governmental organizations in misleading the public as to the actuality of these highly publicized events. The emerging trend towards this mode of action, and the deep implications this has for world order, make an understanding of its history particularly critical







The Record of the Paper


Book Description

On May 26, 2004, the New York Times issued an apology for its coverage of Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction. The Times had failed to provide what most readers expect from the US newspaper of record: journalistic accuracy and integrity about important matters of US foreign policy. But the Times' coverage of Iraq was worse than they were willing to concede. In fact, for at least the past fifty years the editorial policy of the Times-from its coverage of the 1954 Geneva Accords on Vietnam to the issue of torture in Abu Ghraib-has failed to incorporate international law into its coverage of US foreign policy. This lapse, as the authors demonstrate, has profound implications for the quality of the Times' journalism and the function of the press in a country supposedly governed by the rule of law. In this meticulously researched study, Howard Friel and Richard Falk reveal how the Times has consistently misreported major US foreign policy issues, including the bombing of North Vietnam in response to the Tonkin Gulf and Pleiku incidents in 1964-65, the Reagan administration's policy toward the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, the 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's elected president, and the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.




Rogue States


Book Description

The bestselling author and activist “has delivered another impressive argument that the U.S. flouts international law when it finds it convenient to do so” (Publishers Weekly). In this still-timely classic, Noam Chomsky argues that the real “rogue” states are the United States and its allies. Chomsky turns his penetrating gaze toward US involvement in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America to trace the enduring combined effects of military domination and economic imperialism on these regions. “Noam Chomsky is like a medic attempting to cure a national epidemic of selective amnesia . . . [Rogue States is] a timely guide to the tactics that the powerful employ to keep power concentrated and people compliant . . . Chomsky’s work is crucial at a time when our empire perpetually disguises its pursuit of power under the banners of ‘aid,’ ‘humanitarian intervention,’ and ‘globalization.’ Americans have to begin deciphering the rhetoric. Chomsky’s a good place to start.” —The Village Voice “World-famous MIT linguist Chomsky has long kept up a second career as a cogent voice of the hard left, excoriating American imperialism, critiquing blinkered journalists and attacking global economic injustice.” —Publishers Weekly “Nothing escapes [Chomsky’s] attention . . . [Rogue States is] wonderfully lucid.” —PeaceWork Praise for Noam Chomsky “Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet.” —The New York Times Book Review “The conscience of the American people.” —New Statesman “One of the radical heroes of our age . . . a towering intellect . . . powerful, always provocative.” —The Guardian




State Terrorism and Neoliberalism


Book Description

This book explores the complicity of democratic states from the global North in state terrorism in the global South. It evaluates the relationship between the use of state terrorism by Northern liberal democracies and efforts by those states to further incorporate the South into the global political economy and to entrench neoliberalism. Most scholarship on terrorism tends to ignore state terrorism by Northern democracies, focusing instead on terrorist threats to Northern interests from illiberal actors. The book accounts for the absence of Northern state terrorism from terrorism studies, and provides a detailed conceptualisation of state terrorism in relation to other forms of state violence. The book explores state terrorism as used by European and early American imperialists to secure territory, to coerce slave and forced wage labour, and to defeat national liberation movements during the process of decolonisation. It examines the use of state terrorism by the US throughout the Cold War to defeat political movements that would threaten US elite interests. Finally, it assesses the practices of Northern liberal democratic states in the 'War on Terror' and shows that many Northern liberal democracies have been active in state terrorism, including through extraordinary rendition. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, security studies, South American politics, US foreign policy and IR in general. Ruth Blakeley is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Bristol.