[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 86 (Thursday, June 17, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1321-E1322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E1321]]
 REMARKS BY EDWARD HERMAN (Item No. 11) PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF FINANCE, 
                           THE WHARTON SCHOOL

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 17, 1999

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, on June 10, 1999, I joined with Rep. 
Cynthia A. McKinney, Rep. Barbara Lee, and Rep. John Conyers in hosting 
the fifth in a series of Congressional Teach-In sessions on the Crisis 
in Kosovo. If a lasting peace is to be achieved in the region, it is 
essential that we cultivate a consciousness of peace and actively 
search for creative solutions. We must construct a foundation for peace 
through negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy.
  Part of the dynamic of peace is a willingness to engage in meaningful 
dialogue, to listen to one another openly and to share our views in a 
constructive manner. I hope that these Teach-In sessions will 
contribute to this process by providing a forum for Members of Congress 
and the public to explore options for a peaceful resolution. We will 
hear from a variety of speakers on different sides of the Kosovo 
situation. I will be introducing into the Congressional Record 
transcripts of their remarks and essays that shed light on the many 
dimensions of the crisis.
  This presentation is by Edward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, 
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He taught for a decade in 
the Annenberg School of Communications at Pennsylvania State 
University, with a course in Analysis of Media Bias. He is a 
professional economist and media analyst. He is also a renowned author 
with some 20 blocks on economics, political economy, and the media. 
Among them are The Political Economy of Human Rights (2 vols, 1979, 
with Noam Chomsky) and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of 
Mass Media (with Noam Chomsky, 1988).
  Professor Herman exposes the manner in which the mainstream media has 
uncritically adopted a variety of ``loaded words'' that present a 
distorted and misleading impression of the reality of the War in 
Yugoslavia. One by one he dissects terms such as ``credibility'' and 
``negotiations,'' and describes the cynical manipulation of phrases 
such as ``collateral damage'' and ``genocide and ethnic cleansing.'' He 
concludes that ``western hostility to genocide and ethnic cleansing has 
been highly selective,'' citing a number of severe humanitarian crises 
in which the United States and NATO chose to do nothing.
  Following Professor Herman's remarks is an article authored by him, 
along with David Peterson, that appeared in Z Magazine. This article, 
entitled ``Bomb the New York Times?'', discusses the hypocrisy of the 
western media when it justifies the bombing of Serbian media 
installations because of the Serbs' lack of ``balance'' in their 
treatment of the war.

      PRESENTATION BY PROFESSOR EDWARD HERMAN, THE WHARTON SCHOOL

       Although this is a free society, the U.S. mainstream media 
     often serve as virtual propaganda agents of the state, 
     peddling viewpoints the state wishes to inculcate and 
     marginalizing any alternative perspectives. This is 
     especially true in times of war, when the wave of patriotic 
     frenzy encouraged by the war-makers quickly engulfs the 
     media. Under these conditions the media's capacity for 
     dispassionate reporting and critical analysis is suspended, 
     and they quickly become cheer-leaders and apologists for war.
       This is reflected in their uncritical acceptance of loaded 
     words that cry out for careful analysis, but which are used 
     by the media instead to confuse and obfuscate issues. Let me 
     illustrate with some key words in current usage that purr or 
     snarl in service to propaganda.
       Credibility: Credibility is a purr word, that oozes 
     goodness. We all want to be credible and to have our country 
     and NATO credible. But when Senator John McCain called for a 
     ground war in Yugoslavia in order to preserve our own and 
     NATO's credibility, common sense tells us that he ignored the 
     danger of turning a mistake into a catastrophe. Isn't it a 
     sign of moral weakness to be unable to admit a mistake? And 
     isn't the failure to do so exceedingly stupid? Isn't the kind 
     of credibility that comes from continuing a mistaken course 
     obtained at the cost of a loss of credibility as a rational 
     actor? The media have been extremely lax in failing to look 
     behind this purr word to the real issues at stake. And they 
     have thereby allowed it to serve as an instrument of war 
     propaganda.
       Humanitarian bombing: NATO allegedly began bombing in March 
     for humanitarian purposes. Humanitarian is a purr word, but 
     humanitarian bombing is an oxymoron, blending the warm-
     hearted with dealing death. As the NATO bombing 
     exponentially increased the damage inflicted on the 
     purported beneficiaries, as well as large numbers of 
     innocent Serb civilians, it has been anti-humanitarian in 
     fact at all levels. The CIA and NATO military officials 
     like General Wesley Clark have admitted that the negative 
     humanitarian effects were expected. These facts lead me to 
     conclude that the phrase is a propaganda fraud covering 
     over a hidden agenda, in which Kosovo Albanian welfare had 
     little or no place. But the media have never considered 
     the phrase an oxymoron or the policy a human rights fraud. 
     With the end of the bombing, the media trumpet the 
     official view that NATO won a ``victory,'' but they do not 
     ask whether this triumph was in fulfillment of the alleged 
     humanitarian aim--they have implicitly abandoned that 
     purported objective in favor of victory over the Serbs.
       Military targets: NATO has repeatedly claimed that it is 
     avoiding civilian and sticking to military targets. However, 
     it has steadily expanded the definition of military target 
     into anything that directly or indirectly helps the Serb war 
     effort, so that electric and water facilities that primarily 
     serve civilians are included as military targets. This is in 
     violation of international law and the army's own rules of 
     warfare, and therefore amounts to the commission of war 
     crimes (on which Christopher Simpson gives interesting 
     details). NATO has been one step away from finding the direct 
     bombing of civilians proper military targeting--after all, 
     those civilians pay taxes that help fund Milosevic's war 
     machine. The media have treated this process of redefinition, 
     and the de facto commission of war crimes, with the lightest 
     touch. In fact, pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York 
     Times have urged the direct bombing of civilians and thus the 
     commission of war crimes. On NATO principles justifying the 
     bombing of Serb TV, the New York Times is eminently bombable. 
     So is a ``command and control center'' like the White House.
       Collateral damage: This is our friend from the Vietnam and 
     Persian Gulf wars. It purrs, suggesting inadvertence and 
     ``errors.'' But where the likelihood of ``errors'' in a 
     bombing raid have a probability of over 90 percent, the 
     damage is intentional even if the particular victims were not 
     targeted. If somebody throws a bomb at an individual in a 
     crowded theater, and 100 bystanders are also killed, would we 
     say that the bomb thrower was not clearly guilty of killing 
     the 100 because their deaths were unintended and the damage 
     was ``collateral''? We only reserve such purr word excuses 
     for ``humanitarian'' bombing.
       Negotiations: During the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, 
     U.S. officials regularly claimed to be interested in 
     ``negotiations,'' when in reality they were only ready to 
     accept surrender. With incredible patriotic gullibility the 
     media swallowed the official propaganda claims and helped 
     pave the way for war and the prolongation of war. At 
     Rambouillet, NATO offered Yugoslavia an ultimatum that 
     included NATO's right to occupy all of Yugoslavia. This offer 
     was one no sovereign nation could accept and was designed to 
     be rejected. But just as in the earlier cases, the media 
     accepted the false official version, that Milosevic rather 
     than NATO was unwilling to negotiate or accept reasonable 
     terms. And once again the media helped pave the way for war.
       Rule of law: This is a purr phrase, that is used only when 
     convenient. During the Persian Gulf war, at which time the 
     Bush administration could get Security Council agreement for 
     action against Iraq, President Bush declared that the issue 
     at stake was the ``rule of law'' versus the law of the 
     jungle. However, at the time of the incursion into Panama in 
     1989, when Security Council approval was not obtainable and 
     the incursion was in violation of the OAS agreement, the 
     matter of law was muted. Similarly, unable to obtain Security 
     Council approval for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, with the 
     attack in seeming violation of the UN Charter, and with U.S. 
     participation eventually in violation of the War Powers Act, 
     U.S. and NATO officials do not stress the urgency of the rule 
     of law. And the U.S. mainstream media cooperate by setting 
     this issue aside as well. They now ignore their old favorite 
     Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who says that ``The aggressors have 
     kicked aside the UN, opening a new era where might is 
     right.''
       Genocide and ethnic cleansing: These snarl words have been 
     frequently applied to the Serbs, helping justify the bombing 
     that has turned a moderately serious Kosovo crisis into a 
     regional catastrophe. The greatest single case of ethnic 
     cleansing in Yugoslavia in the 1990s occurred at Krajina in 
     Croatia in 1995, where several hundred thousand Serbs were 
     put to flight and many killed. This action was done with U.S. 
     and NATO aid and was not objected to in any way by NATO.
       Before the NATO bombing an estimated 2,000 had been killed 
     in Kosovo in the prior year. This is half the number killed 
     in Colombia the same year; a country that gets $290 million 
     in U.S. military aid. Two important cases where the word 
     genocide might apply over the last 25 years are Ruanda, in 
     which U.S. officials refused to apply the word and sabotaged 
     any international intervention, and East Timor, where a third 
     of the population died in the wake of Indonesia's invasion 
     and occupation. In the East Timor case, the United States 
     supplied the weapons for the killing and vetoed any effective 
     UN intervention. As regards General Suharto, the world's only 
     known triple genocidist (Indonesia, West Papua, East Timor), 
     on his visit to Washington in 1995 a senior Clinton 
     administration official was quoted in the New York Times as 
     saying of him: ``he's our kind of guy.''
       In sum, U.S. and western hostility to genocide and ethnic 
     cleansing has been highly selective. The policy toward Kosovo 
     has been

[[Page E1322]]

     riddled with contradictions and hypocrisies, and has enlarged 
     a local human rights crisis to a regional disaster. This has 
     been helped by a system of doublespeak that the mainstream 
     media have not only failed to challenge but have incorporated 
     into their own usage. Contrary to their proclaimed 
     objectivity, this failure has made them agents of state 
     propaganda, rather than information servants of a democratic 
     community.


     
                                  ____
                        Bomb the New York Times?

                (By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson)

       NATO spokespersons have justified the bombing of Serbian TV 
     and radio on the grounds that these broadcasters are an 
     ``instrument of state propaganda,'' tell lies, spew forth 
     hatred, provide no ``balance'' in their offerings, and thus 
     help prolong the war. In an April 8th news briefing NATO Air 
     Commodore David Wilby explained: ``Serb radio is an 
     instrument of propaganda and repression. It has filled the 
     airwaves with hate and with lies over the years, and 
     especially now. It is therefore a legitimate target in this 
     campaign. If President Milosevic would provide equal time for 
     Western news broadcasts in his programs without censorship . 
     . . then his TV would become an acceptable instrument of 
     public information.''
       The mainstream U.S. media have accepted this NATO rationale 
     for silencing the Serbia media, viewing themselves as truth-
     tellers and supporters of just policies against the evil 
     enemy. But this is the long-standing self-deception of people 
     whose propaganda service is as complete as that of Serbian 
     state broadcasters. Just as they did during the Persian Gulf 
     war, the mainstream media once again serve as cheer-leaders 
     and propagandists for ``our side. And as the brief review 
     below shows, on NATO principles the Times et al. are 
     eminently bombable.


                                Balance

       The Serbian media is bombable, says Wilby, because it has 
     not provided ``equal time'' to western broadcasters. This 
     ludicrous criterion is far better met by the Serbian media 
     than by those of the U.S. (or Britain). An estimated one-
     third or more of Belgrade residents watch western TV 
     news broadcasts (including CNN, BBC, and Britain's Sky 
     News), and many Serbs watch CNN for advance warning of 
     bombing raids. This greatly exceeds the proportion of U.S. 
     citizens who have access to dissident foreign messages, 
     and domestic dissent here is marginalized. FAIR's May 5 
     study ``Slanted Sources in Newshour and Nightline Kosovo 
     Coverage'' showed that only 8 percent of its participants 
     were critical of the bombing campaign, far below the Wilby 
     standard for Serbia.


                             Spewing hatred

       The demonization of Milosevic, the shameless use of of the 
     plight of Albanian refugees to stoke hatred and justify NATO 
     violence, and the near-reflexive use of words like 
     ``genocide'' and ``ethnic cleansing'' surely competes with 
     anything that the ``state-controlled'' Serbian media have 
     served up. As with the earlier demonization of Saddam 
     Hussein, Newsweek placed Milosevic on its cover titled ``The 
     Face of Evil'' (April 19), while Time showed the demon's face 
     with an assassin's crosshairs centered between his eyes 
     (April 5). A State Department official has acknowledged that 
     ``the demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the 
     air attacks'' (San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 1999), and 
     the media have responded.
       Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has 
     repeatedly called for the direct killing of Serbian 
     civilians--``less than surgical bombing'' and ``sustained 
     unreasonable bombing''--as a means of putting pressure on the 
     Yugoslavian government (April 6, 9, 23, May 4 and 11), which 
     amounts to urging NATO to commit war crimes. If Serb 
     broadcasters were openly calling for slaughtering Kosovo 
     Albanians the media would surely regard this as proving Serb 
     barbarism.


          Evading or suppressing inconvenient facts and issues

       Because the NATO attack is in violation of the UN Charter 
     the mainstream media have set this issue aside, although in 
     1990, when George Bush could mobilize a Security Council vote 
     for his war, he stated that he acted on behalf of a world 
     ``where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle,'' 
     In 1990, it was awkward that Bush had appeased Saddam Hussein 
     before his invasion of Kuwait, so the media buried that fact; 
     in 1999 the media rarely mention that Clinton supported the 
     massive Croatian ethnic cleansing of Serbs in 1995 or that he 
     has consistently ignored Turkey's repression of Kurds (with 
     Turkey actually providing bases for NATO bombing attacks on 
     Yugoslavia).


                 The Big Lie of NATO's humanitarian aim

       That this is a lie demonstrated by the terrible effects of 
     NATO policy on the purported beneficiaries; by the fact that 
     these negative consequences were seen as likely by 
     intelligence and military officials, which didn't affect 
     their willingness to ``take a chance''; by NATO's 
     continuation of the policy even as evidence of its 
     catastrophic effects mounted; by NATO's methods, which have 
     included the destruction of the Serb's civilian 
     infrastructure and the use of delayed action cluster bombs 
     and depleted uranium shells that could make Kosovo 
     uninhabitable; and by the NATO's failure to prepare for the 
     induced refugee crisis and its unwillingness to accept more 
     than nominal numbers of refugees. NATO's official responses 
     to repeated civilian casualties from its bombing attacks have 
     been notably lacking in human sympathy. British journalist 
     Robert Fisk was appalled by a NATO press conference of May 
     14, the day after 87 ethnic Albanians were ``ripped apart'' 
     by NATO bombs at Korisa. NATO spokesmen Jamie Shea and Major-
     General Walter Jertz ``informed us `It was another very 
     effective day of operations'.'' There was ``not a single 
     bloody word of astonishment or compassion,'' (The Independent 
     [London], May 15, 1999). This response of NATO officials was 
     not mentioned, let alone featured, in the U.S. media.
       Thanks to the scale of the refugee crisis, the U.S. media 
     have been unable to avoid reporting that the NATO bombing has 
     been followed by catastrophic effects. But while some 
     commentators have declared the policy a failure and have 
     castigated the administration for it, most have followed the 
     official line of blaming all of these nasty developments on 
     Milosevic. They have focused intently and uncritically on 
     alleged Serb abuses, all allegedly ``deliberate,'' whereas 
     NATO killings and damage are slighted, and when unavoidably 
     reported are allowed to be ``errors.''


             The Big Lie about the ``failure'' of diplomacy

       As with Kosovo, during the Persian Gulf war experience the 
     media accepted that the enemy has refused to negotiate, thus 
     compelling military action. Although Bush himself stated 
     repeatedly that there would be no negotiations--``no reward 
     for aggression''--and that Iraq must surrender, the media 
     pretended that the U.S. was laboring to ``go the extra mile 
     for peace,'' while they suppressed information on numerous 
     rejected peace offers. Thomas Friedman, after acknowledging 
     that Bush strove to block off diplomacy lest negotiations 
     ``defuse the crisis'' (Aug. 22, 1990), subsequently reported 
     that ``diplomacy has failed and it has come to war'' (Jan. 
     20, 1991), without mentioning that the diplomatic failure was 
     intentional.
       In the case of the NATO war on Yugoslavia, the official 
     position is that Yugoslavia refused NATO's reasonable offer 
     at Rambouillet, and that Milosevic's intransigence thus 
     forced NATO to bomb. This is a Big Lie--NATO's offer was 
     never reasonable, requiring Yugoslavia to accept not only 
     full occupying power rights by NATO in Kosovo--apart of 
     Yugoslavia--but also NATO's right to ``free and unrestricted 
     passage and unimpeded access'' throughout Yugoslavia. The 
     Serbs had indicated a definite willingness to allow a 
     military presence in Kosovo, but not by NATO and certainly 
     not with NATO authority to occupy all of Yugoslavia. NATO 
     would not negotiate on these matters and issued an ultimatum 
     to Yugoslavia that no sovereign state could accept.
       As in the Persian Gulf war case, however, the mainstream 
     U.S. media accepted the official line that the bombing 
     resulted from a Serbian refusal of a reasonable offer after 
     ``extensive and repeated efforts to obtain a peaceful 
     solution'' (Clinton). The Serb position and the continued 
     Serb willingness to negotiate on who would be included in the 
     occupying forces was essentially ignored or deemed 
     unreasonable; the ultimatum aspect of the process was 
     considered of no importance; and the fact that the ultimatum 
     required Yugoslavia to agree to virtual occupation of the 
     entire state by NATO was suppressed. The NATO position, as 
     the bush position in the Persian Gulf war, was surrender, not 
     negotiate. And the media today, as then, pretend that we are 
     eager to negotiate with a mulish enemy.
       In sum, the propaganda service of the mainstream U.S. media 
     to the Kosovo war would be hard to surpass, and on NATO 
     principles the New York Times and its confreres are eminently 
     bombable. But as usual, for the U.S. and NATO powers 
     international law and moral principles apply only to others. 
     To the godfather and his flunkies, an entirely different set 
     of principles applies.

     

                          ____________________