The Real Terror Network:

...Second, because of the close ties between the U.S...

...i.e., add up the various fatalities caused by the U.S...

...and hence do not want to displease that audience...

...He also notes the human costs of these countries' internal security policies: for instance, the devastation of the former Portuguese colony of Timor following its occupation by Indonesia in 1975...

...The problem is that Herman is not satisfied with documenting the human rights violations of American client states...

...Amnesty International, which has consistently refused to rank countries according to their respect for human rights, has long recognized that the "politics of body counts'' ultimately destroys human rights as a serious moral issue...

...Hitler effectively used the same argument in his struggle to destroy the Weimar Republic...

...And while Herman greatly overstates the extent to which the media are under the control of U.S...

...For example, prior to the case of Jacobo Timerman, the U.S...

...The Italian Communists' (PCI) firm support for tough anti-terrorism measures is a reflection of its concern that the Red Brigades' terrorism could lead to a rightist dictatorship...

...and its third-world client states are worse than those of Communist nations...

...and its allies, and then compare this total to the total number of fatalities that have taken place under Communist governments...

...ruling elites, the media ignore or belittle the massive human rights violations carried out by the third-world allies of the United States and instead concentrate on human rights violations in Communist countries...

...The disturbing aspect of Herman's charges against the media is that he (like many other writers today) has redefined the concept of a "double standard...

...Ernest Evans The two central arguments of this book by Professor Edward Herman of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are as follows: First, what he calls "the real terror network," i.e., the network of ties between the U.S...

...Or, as Stalin put it (with characteristic cynical insight): "One human death is a tragedy, a million human deaths are a statistic...

...The trouble with his argument that the U.S...

...media paid little attention to the deeds of the military government of Argentina...

...In addition, one must make one's human rights efforts proportionate to the major ongoing cases of human rights violations: For example, if one works on human rights in Cambodia, one must also work on human rights in Timor - otherwise one is a hypocrite...

...and the thousands of people who have disappeared or were killed in the years since the Argentine military took power in 1976...

...media and the U.S...

...Partially this is because the body-count mentality leads to endless (and unresolvable) debates over the numbers of fatalities under different regimes...

...And following a series of major terrorist incidents in France in the summer of 1982 President Mitterrand instituted a series of forceful counter-terrorism measures...

...And the collapse of Uruguay's democratic system in 1972-1973 was in large measure due to the inability of the country's civilian leaders to deal with the problem of the Tupamaro guerrillas...

...He documents the enormous human costs of the economic policies pursued by national security states such as Brazil and Chile: In such countries the great bulk of the population has suffered a major (and in some cases catastrophic) decline in its standard of living...

...The PCI is all too well aware of Italy's history in the early 1920s, and is also conscious of the damage done to Allende's government in Chile by the violence of the MIR (movement of the revolutionary left...

...and its client states are worse human rights offenders than the Communist states is that the only way one can defend such a charge is by engaging in "the politics of body counts...

...and second that terrorism by revolutionary movements is an insignificant problem...

...With respect to his first argument Herman is on solid ground when he notes the extensive human rights violations of a number of U.S...

...Many of the parties of the European left are well aware of the dangers of terrorism...

...resulting in higher rates of infant mortality, widespread malnutrition, and an increased incidence of certain types of disease...

...With respect to Herman's criticisms of the U.S...

...media, there is considerable truth to his charge that the media has ignored or deemphasized many cases of massive human rights violations carried out by allies of the United States...

...ruling elites and their allies in the third world, is engaged in systematic violence-on a far greater scale than are revolutionary movements such as the PLO and the IRA (he refers to terrorism by such movements as "retail terrorism" in contrast to the "wholesale terrorism" of the United States and its client states in the third world...

...In the final analysis, there is much wisdom in Simone Weil's famous comment about the need to denounce forcefully all atrocities: "If you don't care about every martyred child, then you don't care about any of them...

...Readers of Herman's book should not let those elements of truth contained in his charges blind them to the fact that the book also contains ideas that undermine the cause of human rights.se of human rights...

...Increasingly however, writers on the left, right, and center are giving a new meaning to the term double standard: As they use the term, simply denouncing a given action no matter which country commits it is not enough to prove that one does not have a double standard...

...financial, business, and political elites, his statements about an unwillingness on the part of the media to '' rock the boat" are largely true...

...client states in the third world...

...The results of this new meaning of double standard are unending, unresolvable debates about which are the "crucial" human rights causes at present, and charges and counter-charges of hypocrisy because one is ignoring this or that major instance of human rights being violated...

...he goes on to advance two further arguments: First, that the human rights violations of the U.S...

...The problem with Herman's argument that revolutionary violence is not a problem is that in the right circumstances terrorism can help cause the collapse of a democratic government and its replacement with a dictatorship...

...Both these quotations make the same point: Moving the human rights issue from the level of the suffering and pain of individuals to the level of "statistics" nullifies the issue...

...After all, the media are commercial establishments that depend on a mass audience in order to survive...

...The problem with this reinterpretation of the term double standard is that it is another example of the "body count" mentality that is so destructive of effective human rights efforts...

...The West German Social Democrats' support for a tough counter-terrorism policy is due in large part to a determination not to leave the Federal Republic vulnerable to the sort of charges that Hitler made concerning Weimar's inability to preserve political order...

...Originally, the term "double standard" was defined as follows: A person was guilty of a double standard if he or she defended an action (such as denial of freedom of speech) in one country and attacked the same action with respect to another country...

...More fundamentally still, the body-count mentality inevitably leads to belittling and minimizing the suffering of people under brutal regimes that are "on our side...

...In Italy in the early 1920s Mussolini made skillful use of an ongoing wave of terroristic violence to argue that Italy's democratic government was bankrupt because it could not preserve order...