Wednesday, February 19, 2025

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #217, FEBRUARY 19, 2025.

 

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #217, FEBRUARY 19, 2025.  Compiled by Dick Bennett  

Origins of Wars:
Walter Karp.  Indispensable Enemies: leaders’ desire for power.
Herman and Chomsky.   Manufacturing Consent: media support of ruling power.
Monthly Review:  failure to abide by international weapons treaties.

 

Leaders’ Desire for Power

Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America.  Saturday Review P, 1973.

In prosecuting an aggressive foreign policy, the party oligarchs have been driven by no cause or interest external to themselves: by no fundamental economic interest, by no genuine threat to the security of the Republic, by no irresistible poplar demand.  Except in the post-World War I period [v. “Wilson’s war”], American foreign policy has been gratuitously aggressive since 1898, a policy carried out for no compelling reason except the oligarchs’ wish to prosecute an aggressive foreign policy.  Their reason for wanting such a policy, however, is scarcely mysterious and certainly not irrational.  An aggressive foreign policy safeguards the power of the power wielders and strengthens their control over those whom they rule” (248).   

Control of Media by Ruling Oligarchs and Groups

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.  1st ed. 1988.   Paperback, 2nd ed. January 15, 2002   by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

Publisher’s description
In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance.

Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

 

Failure to abide by International weapons treaties About Manufacturing Consent

A “compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions” (The New York Times Book Review) due to the underlying economics of publishingfrom famed scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. With a new introduction.

In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance.

Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

See Less

About Manufacturing Consent

A “compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions” (The New York Times Book Review) due to the underlying economics of publishingfrom famed scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. With a new introduction.

In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance.

Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

See Less

 U.S. preparations for “prolonged and limited” nuclear war and  repeated refusal to abide by international agreements.

“Notes from the Editors.”   Monthly Review (September 2024 Volume 76, Number 4).   This month’s “Notes from the Editors” recounts the history of U.S. preparations for “prolonged and limited” nuclear war and Washington’s repeated refusal to abide by international agreements regarding nuclear weaponry. With the recent announcement that the United States will be stationing nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles on German soil—within minutes’ striking distance of Moscow—this history is now, troublingly, more relevant than ever. | more…     Source

 

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