The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism

The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I

Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781608464487
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Imperialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A brilliant, shattering, and convincing account of United States-backed suppression of political and human rights in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and the role of the media in misreporting these policies The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism relentlessly dissects the official views of establishment scholars and their journals. The "best and brightest" pundits of the status quo emerge from this book thoroughly denuded of their credibility.

Notes

Frontispiece

1. Countries are included on the Frontispiece diagram on the following criteria: (a) that they have been classified as using torture “on an administrative basis” or as “an essential mode of governance” in the Amnesty International (AI) Report on Torture (U.S. edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), or in other AI reports on specific countries; (b) that there is other reasonably authentic evidence of extensive torture in the 1970s, with cumulative numbers tortured probably in excess of 500, and with torture carried out on a systematic basis in multiple detention centers. There are ambiguities in the concept of torture and in the notion of torture on an administrative basis. The data are also imperfect. But we see no reason to believe that there are any net biases that should call into question the fundamental drift of facts described in this chart (whose roots are discussed in Chapter 2, section 2.1.2). Amnesty International’s global concern for political prisoners and their maltreatment has made it the subject of abuse and criticism for alleged bias by a variety of ideologues and special interest groups. For several from the West, and a vigorous AI response, see the following: “Amnesty’s Odd Man In,” editorial New York Times (14 December 1978); Stephen Miller, “Politics and Amnesty International,” Commentary, March 1978; Andrew Blane, “The Individual in the Cell: A Rebuttal to ‘Politics and Amnesty International’,” Matchbox, Winter 1979.

The parent-client relationship is one of superiority-inferiority, dominance-subordination, and control-dependency. It arises commonly from sheer economic-military strength and interest by one power relative to its neighbors, and the relationship often emerges without the overt use of force. Among the 26 planets, for a substantial number the governments were installed by direct or indirect action of the sun; and for all of them the sun is recognized to be the friendly superpower within whose orbit the planets move, protected from external or internal threats by the military and economic might of the sun. We have limited the number of planets to cases of countries basking in the sun’s orbit that have also received significant flows of direct economic and military aid. South Africa is excluded immediately on grounds of the absence of such aid, but its ties to Great Britain and its strength and relative independence would disqualify it from planetary status in any event.

2. Data for the filiation lines connecting the sun with the planets were taken from the following: military aid, 1946-1975, from A.I.D., U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants and Assistance from International Organizations, 1976 ed.; number of client military trained in the United States, 1950-1975, from “The Pentagon’s Proteges, U.S. Training Programs For Foreign Military Personnel,” NACLA’s Latin America & Empire Report, January 1976, p. 28; and police aid or training to clients, from Michael T. Klare, Supplying Repression, Field Foundation, December, 1977, pp. 20-21.

Preface to the 2014 Edition

1. Among other publications, see E.S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1988, Pantheon; second edition with new introduction, 2002. N. Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, 1989, South End. Edward Herman and Robert McChesney, Global Media: the Missionaries of Global Capitalism, 1997.

2. For review, see N. Chomsky, “‘Green Light’ for War Crimes,” in Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line (Verso, 2000). Richard Tanter, Mark Selden, and Stephen Shalom, eds., East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community, Roman & Littlefield, 2000 (in which a slightly different version of “‘Green Light’ for War Crimes” also appears). For detailed review of the early years, in addition to the chapter reprinted here, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (1982).

3. See Manufacturing Consent.

4. Fallows, Atlantic, June 1982. Power, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Basic Books, 2002.

5. Moynihan with Suzanne Weaver, A Dangerous Place, Little, Brown, 1978.

6. John Holdridge (State Dept.), Hearing before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, 2nd sess., Sept. 14, 1982, 71.

7. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, ed., Cambridge History of the Cold War, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

8. Open Society Foundation, Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition, Feb. 2013.

9. Greg Grandin, “The Latin American Exception,” http://www.tomdispatch .com/blog/175650/.

Prefatory Note

1. The principal sources for this account of the suppression are affidavits supplied to the authors by the publisher and associate publisher of Warner Modular Publications, Inc.

2. See Chapter 2, section 2.2, and Volume II, Chapter 4.

3. For a more general discussion of mass media choices and bases of selection see chapter 2, section 2.0.

4. Herbert Mitgang, “Nixon Book Dispute Erupts at Meeting,” New York Times (28 May 1978) p. 16.

1 Introduction: Summary of Major Findings and Conclusions

1. See, for example, Andrei D. Sakharov, “Human Rights: A Common Goal,” Wall Street Journal (27 June 1978); also Valery Chalidze, “Human Rights: A Policy of Honor.” Wall Street Journal (8 April 1977). According to Chalidze, “A state does not initiate aggression with a declaration of war; it begins by persecuting its own citizens’ honest and lawful behavior. After its critics are silenced, a government can prepare international aggression, whip up a war psychosis among its citizens and secretly increase military expenditures at the expense of social needs.”

2. See M.J. Crozier, S.P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of’ Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. NYU Press, 1975. For discussion, see N. Chomsky, “Human Rights” and American Foreign Policy, Spokesman, 1978.

3. See especially Richard A. Falk, The Vietnam War and International Law, Princeton University Press, 1968, 2 vols.

4. See Seymour M. Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare, Bobbs-Merrill, 1968; Eric Prokosch, “Conventional Killers,” The New Republic, 1 November 1969; AFSC-Narmic, Weapons for Counterinsurgency, 1970; Prokosch, The Simple Art of Murder: Anti-Personnel Weapons and their Development, AFSC-­Narmic, 1972.

5. See below, chapter 4, section 4.

6. The deep involvement of the U.S. government in the overthrow of the last democratic government of Brazil is discussed in detail in A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, Pantheon, 1978, pp. 38-116 and in Jan K. Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977, passim. Some of the key facts are as follows: the U.S. government not only knew of the plotting but probably helped to co...