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Edward Herman = Srebrenica genocide denier

Edward Herman is Srebrenica genocide denier, do some research before removing facts. Judging from 0 comments on his discussion page, it seems that he or people associated to him opened this article on wikipedia and wish to control it. Edward S. Herman has been criticized for Srebrenica genocide denial and is considered to be one of the most outspoken deniers of genocide in Srebrenica. (see 1 & srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/10/milivoje-ivanisevic-disturbed-mind-of.html 2) Revert war does not help anybody. He is outspoken Srebrenica genocide denier and that's a fact no matter what his defenders say about him. Bosniak 16:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Herman's position on Srebrenica certainly can be added to the article, and the Zmag source is an appropriate one (being his own words on the matter) - the blog, however, is not. Blogs are not authoritative and shouldn't be used for sources in Wikipedia. There are, of course, recognised critics of Herman and his position, and though they often misconstrue or misrepresent him and his work, that's not to say that there aren't viable sources available to cite in criticism of Herman's writings on Srebrenica and other matters. If you find such a source, please add it, but in doing so, it is essential that Herman's position not be caricatured in the manner of the reverted sentence. To describe Herman as a genocide denier is (intentionally ?) inflammatory and clearly tends to cast him into the same lot as such dubious folks as Holocaust deniers and apologists for Stalinist outrages and other atrocities. Any description of Herman's argument must deal carefully and not superficially with his points, because the issue is emotionally and politically charged. To treat what he says lightly (as in the reverted sentence) does him, his argument, and more importantly, the victims of the massacre a disservice. To give a more precise example of what I'm talking about: to say only that Herman is a denier of genocide in Srebrenica leaves the impression that he denies that anyone at all was killed (which is not his claim), it ignores the serious point he makes, that massacres - when their scale is augmented with terms like "genocide" - can be and have been used to justify even greater crimes (in this case, the greater numbers of dead produced by the US-Nato bombings and other military actions in the Balkans). Finally, you and I know that Edward Herman is, as they say, a controversial figure, and so his Wikipedia article is likely to be the site of edit wars and vandalism. Anything we can do to minimise the risk of such damage ought to be undertaken at the start. A balanced, in-depth presentation of his life and work is what is required, not a selective blast of incendiary accusations. (By the way, "critique" is not the appropriate word here, it should be "criticism", though I don't support the creation of a section of criticism in this or any other biography and would rather such material was organically integrated into the whole text itself.) Pinkville 19:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
..."Blogs are not authoritative and shouldn't be used for sources in Wikipedia." Are you implying that web sites are authoritative? Just because someone runs website it mean it's authoritative? What about official blog of Prof Deborah E. Lipstadt who fights Holocaust denial? Are you saying her blog is not authoritative just because she choose to publish her material via blog? What you say does not make any sense. Srebrenica Genocide Blog is well referenced as well as Prof Deborah Lipstadt's blog, with quality references, as opposed to ZMag trash whose deniers use ZMag to quote each other in sources to prove their pre-conceived conclusions. ZMag is the least authoritative web site to deal with anything. It's comprised by a bunch of people who reduced themselves to Srebrenica genocide denial (Ed Herman included) and who enjoy calling themselves "media analysts" (yeah right, nice name they gave to themselves). ZMag can only be used as an example of genocide denial. That's all. I will get back to you with more comments, when I get off my work (Yes, I still work on Saturdays). Feel free to use any source you like, there is plenty of them. Bosniak 17:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I modified the edit to try to be more balanced. Bosniak, you need to change your tone. Assume good faith. The Znet reference is Herman's own work! Such a primary source is certainly better than something someone writes on a blog, or anywhere else, without proper citation, etc. Rolando 17:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Dear Rolando, thank you for being fair and not lashing out at me. I will change my tone. I have included reference and quotations from respected British historian Marko Attila Hoare. Thank you. Bosniak 20:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Herman's most recent writing on this issue is here. Again, he isn't denying that killing happened at Srebrenica, he is pointing out that, first, the use of the word "genocide" in this case is inflated and propagandistic (he provides voluminous references to back up his argument), and second, that the use of the term was applied exclusively to Srebrencia - even though worse slaughters happened in other locales at the same time in the former Yugoslavia. Genocide refers to a planned eradication of a people, as with the native peoples of North America, the Romani and Jews of Europe, and the Africans of the Congo. Herman is talking about the selective use of the term genocide that serves specific interests... Pinkville 02:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Pinkville, you are missing the point. I have backed up my edit with authoritative sources and also with a quotation Herman's own words. Herman has been criticized for Srebrenica genocide denial, quote:
"Hardly surprising, then, that Balkan genocide denial has centred its efforts on the Srebrenica massacre ever since. Recently, a ‘Srebrenica Research Group’ has been established by one of the most virulent of the deniers, Edward S. Herman... Herman concludes: ‘The ‘Srebrenica massacre’ [note the quote marks] is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars... But the link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent." [1] [2] [3] Bosniak 06:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Bosniak, while I was trying to show Herman's views, and then the critiques, you have reverted to the ad hominem and demagogic tactic of likening Herman to an atrocity denier, which he is not. You have further buried his own argument within citations of criticisms of it. Herman acknowledges that thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed around the time of the Srebrenica Massacre, but disagrees with use of the word "genocide" in this context, and his ongoing critique has been of the use of Srebrenica by the U.S. and its allies. Please make an effort to explain his argument fairly, even if you do not agree with it. Rolando 07:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Passage on Srebrenica moved here

Herman has been criticized for his stance on the Srebrenica massacre:

Hardly surprising, then, that Balkan genocide denial has centred its efforts on the Srebrenica massacre ever since. Recently, a ‘Srebrenica Research Group’ has been established by one of the most virulent of the deniers, Edward S. Herman... Herman concludes: ‘The ‘Srebrenica massacre’ [note the quote marks] is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars... But the link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent.[4] [5]

However, it should be noted that Herman is not alone in this. Other writers who have criticised media coverage of the Srebrenica massacre include Diana Johnstone, Jean Bricmont and Michael Parenti.

Criticism

I and others have already argued this before, but I don't think there should be a separate "Criticism" section in any circumstances - rather, descriptions of criticism should be integrated into the appropriate section dealing with Herman's thought, writings and actions. Furthermore, since this article is merely a stub at this point, a criticism section injects undue weight; for the same reason, a request to expand the Criticism section is - at best - premature. The priority for this article should be to provide more content relating to Herman's biography, thought and writing... criticism of such can be included along the way. Pinkville (talk) 17:08, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Following from my argument here (re: Undue weight), I will soon be removing the "Criticism" section and placing the content here on the talk page for later use/integration into the article. Fair? Pinkville (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Srebrenica

Herman don't denial that massacre happened in Srebrenice, but him don't accept to qualify massacre as genocide.--Vojvodae please be free to write :) 15:22, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

The difference of opinion between Herman and others is clearly established in the article. Philip Cross (talk) 15:48, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
What about the difference of facts?Keith-264 (talk) 09:29, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Propaganda_System_One.html Keith-264 (talk) 10:03, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
...as laid out by Edward S. Herman. There should be more inline citations to his work, but the main problem with the article is recentism, not the absence of various examples of 'cover up'.Philip Cross (talk) 11:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC).
It's instructive to compare the content of this page with that of Bimblebum.Keith-264 (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
If 'Bimblebum' is David Dimbleby, whose page Keith-264 and I have both recently edited, there is no comparison. This is really no place for levity, but this is the only quick way to point out the falsity of your comment: one fawns over totally illegitimate power and the other is a member of a British broadcasting dynasty. As far as the Dimbleby article is concerned, you have missed my addition of the comments of the unnamed former cabinet minister, whose identity (particularly in the original source) is fairly transparent. Philip Cross (talk) 13:24, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Pol Pot sympathizer (sic)

In the 'Herman And Chomsky' section, there an idea being projected that these men were somehow Pol Pot sympathizers. I think this is very fallacious. Never have I come across anything these men have said that even resembled downplaying the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. The East Timor genocide is not mentioned in this article (Or anywhere on Wikipedia for that matter). This makes Wikipedia seem no less biased than the New York Times. All these men ever did was compare the media coverage of these two atrocities and criticize Western powers for supporting a genocide in East Timor. There was no genocidal sympathies, that is an insult to these men's legacies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.246.14.168 (talk) 20:09, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

The quotes allege the two men are sympathetic to the former Cambodian regime, not the intervening passages. Citing supoportive reliable sources yourself would be welcome, although they seemed to be somewhat scarce when I researched this issue on the web. You write: "Never have I come across anything these men have said that even resembled downplaying the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge." Clearly you should read the material already referenced for a different opinion.
I have not looked into Herman's work on East Timor myself, but anyone can add a summary (plus references), as you will be aware. Philip Cross (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
I look forward to you writing on East Timor now we know that there isn't anything on Wiki. Keith-264 (talk) 20:59, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
There's plenty about East Timor on Wikipedia.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
As for apologetics, you might consider their remarks in After the Cataclysm (pp. 140, 149, and 205), in which they favorably compare Pol Pot's Cambodia with the American Revolution, with liberated France, and with the Israeli kibbutz system. In a 1977 letter to the Christian Science Monitor, Chomsky announced that "US officials predicted at war's end that one million people would starve in a year. It appears that the new regime was at least partially able to avoid this consequence of the war." However, the American prediction, reported in mainstream newspapers at the time (see the Washington Post, June 4 & 23, 1975, for example), referred not to the effects of war, but to mass deaths expected from the Khmer Rouge takeover, especially the death march from Phnom Penh. By misattributing the expected death toll from the anticipated communist bloodbath to the "US war", and then denying that such deaths had occurred, Chomsky attempted to credit the Khmer Rouge with saving the lives of dead people who they had murdered--and in so doing, he helped make it possible for them to murder twice that sum (David Hawk, director of the Cambodian Documentation Commission, believes that Chomsky’s monstrous effort had "a chilling effect on the mobilization of opinion against the Cambodian genocide"). In "Distortions at Fourth Hand," Chomsky and Herman make clear that the only "documentation" they consider reliable is that provided by Porter and Hildebrand in Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution--namely, official Khmer Rouge propaganda claims--and that refugees were not to be given credence. Referring to "the extreme unreliability of refugee reports," they explained: "Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocutors wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries." Chomsky and Herman suggested that the evacuation of Phnom Penh "may have saved lives", when it killed tens of thousands, while whitewashing the communist shelling of the capital for more than a year. Finally, Chomsky wrote that "At the end of 1978, Cambodia was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction" (Language and Politics, pp. 245-6). In reality, the Khmer Rouge cut off supplies to Phnom Penh for more than a year, systematically destroyed all sources of non-perishable food in the entire country, outlawed fishing, cut down fruit trees, forbade the planting or harvest of mountain leap rice, confiscated food for export, focused on cash crops like jute instead of providing for their people's needs, outlawed medicine and hospitals, forced people to march very long distances without access to water, rejected generous offers of foreign aid, used food as a weapon against resistant communities, embarked on lunatic agricultural policies modeled on Mao's "Great Leap Forward," starved 800,000 people to death, and left a further 2.25 million at risk of death by starvation.
Comparing a genocide with a lesser atrocity is a form of denial or trivialization. When Chomsky and Herman abandoned their support for the Khmer Rouge, they began to argue that "it seems fair to describe the responsibility of the United States and Pol Pot for atrocities during ‘the decade of the genocide’ as being roughly in the same range" (Manufacturing Consent, pp. 264-5)--even though demographic evidence indicates that America killed about 40,000 Khmer Rouge fighters and Cambodian civilians from 1970-5, and that the Khmer Rouge murdered at least 1.8 million civilians from 1975-9 (Marek Sliwinski, Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique, pp. 41-8, 57). (The memoirs of genocide survivors Chanrithy Him, Haing Ngor, Sam and Sokhary You, Someth May and Thida Mam, Vann Nath, Loung Ung, Sophal Leng Stagg, Paul Thai and Molyda Szymusiak all fail to mention a single civil war death in their families, much less a death caused by the US bombing.) In fact, Chomsky and Herman pushed their argument much too far even with the comparison to East Timor: "The harshest critics claim that perhaps 100,000 people have been slaughtered [in Cambodia]....Comparing East Timor with Cambodia, we see that the time frame of alleged atrocities is the same, the numbers allegedly slaughtered are roughly comparable in absolute terms, and five to ten times as high in East Timor relative to population....my own conclusion is that the sources in the [case of] East Timor are more credible" (Radical Priorities, p. 80). Genocide investigators have determined that the Khmer Rouge perpetrated 1,386,734 violent killings and caused 2.2 million unnatural deaths overall (slaughtering 27% of the population in four years of peacetime). The UN reported 18,600 violent killings during the war in East Timor, and perhaps 100,000 excess deaths from hunger and illness, spread out pretty evenly over the entire 25 years of the occupation--with the excess deaths not attributed to either side, but with up to 49% of the violent killings being the responsibility of the communist resistance. To say the least, the Indonesian war in East Timor was not the worst crime committed anywhere in the world since The Holocaust. Noting the relative lack of personal accounts of atrocities or of traumatized Indonesian soldiers, Robert Cribb argues that East Timor "does not appear—on the basis of news reports and academic accounts—to be a society traumatized by mass death....the circumstance leading up to the Dili massacre of 1991....indicate a society which retained its vigor and indignation in a way which would probably not have been possible if it had been treated as Cambodia was treated under Pol Pot." Even Indonesian military strategy was based on winning the "hearts and minds" of the population, a fact that does not support charges of mass killing.
Herman later wrote that Suharto was "at least" in "the same league" as Pol Pot. Although Indonesia was never a democracy under Suharto, there was a wide degree of permissible discussion, by Southeast Asian standards a fairly liberal press, and many of the procedures of social consultation that characterize a democracy. Under his rule, millions of people were freed from poverty, Indonesia became self-sufficient in rice, and a sizeable manufacturing economy grew up. It is still not clear how much control Suharto, still struggling with Sukarno, had during the anti-communist mass killings of 1965. The killings were committed "face to face", with little organization, with broad popular support, with the army sometimes assisting the slaughter and in some cases restraining it--and less than 1% of the Indonesian population perished. There is simply no comparison between the two leaders.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:54, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Hmmmm, an object lesson in sophistry. "Less than 1% of the Indonesian population "perished"?" What does that amount to qua the East Timor population? I notice also that you damn the contractor when Herman Chomsky et al refer to them and accept the contractor when they contradict Chomsky and Hermann. Surely their point is to use universal criteria to expose the selective abuse of information to further US imperialism and its crimes?
"does not appear—on the basis of news reports and academic accounts—to be a society traumatized by mass death....the circumstance leading up to the Dili massacre of 1991....indicate a society which retained its vigor and indignation in a way which would probably not have been possible if it had been treated as Cambodia was treated under Pol Pot."
Really? Did Cribb bother to ask the survivors? I find your comments unworthy of inclusion.Keith-264 (talk) 08:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


Point number one. If you insist on including the very serious accusations leveled against the book After the Cataclysm by Sophal Ear (which, anyone consulting the source will quickly learn, lack any factual basis), i. e. that the book constitutes “a defense” of the KR, then it is highly pertinent to include a quote from the book demonstrating that, in fact, the book is harshly condemnatory of the KR (the “substantial and often gruesome” quote). If not, the article is slanderous.

Point number two. The quote you attribute to McGovern (“murderous thugs”) is in fact a fabrication. In reality, McGovern stated that “an estimated two million innocent Cambodians are systematically slaughtered or starved by their own rulers” - significantly different from what you attribute to the Senator. To include H & C:s “disputation” of the claim falsely attributed to McGovern is clearly intended to insinuate that H & C were denying the scale of KR atrocities. Once again, this amounts to slander. In order to not be slanderous it would be necessary to point out that the book, first of all, cites authoritative sources like Twining as claiming that the casualty figure guessed at at the time was in fact closer to 1% of McGovern's claim, and secondly, points out that McGovern provided no source for his claim. To omit these facts makes things grossly misleading.

I am interested in hearing TheTimesAreAChanging's response to these arguments.

Best regards. Zweig23 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zweig23 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

As I have stated previously, you would be better off finding a RS that defends the pre-1979 Chomsky/Herman position on Cambodia rather than trying to cherry pick qualifiers like "we do not pretend to know where the truth lies". The Economist forcefully endorsed the Ponchaud/Barron/Paul thesis on Cambodia, with the "analysis" cited by Herman and Chomsky being a reader's letter to editor. (From this, they imply that all sophisticated readers understand the propaganda about democide is nonsense for the trailer trash masses.) A comment made by a State Department official during the genocide that "we cannot estimate a figure" is not the same as 25,000 killed. No RS believes the death toll was inflated by a factor of 100. McGovern's estimates were, in fact, close to the truth. The "muderous thugs" quote is the argument Chomsky and Herman attempt to rebut in After the Cataclysm, not a direct quote from McGovern. However, I believe McGovern actually cited an estimate of up to 2.5 million killed (you haven't provided a source for your quote). Moreover, we do not need 5 quotes to describe this controversy.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
In fact, I do not see why McGovern needs to be quoted in this article at all.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:28, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

As I have stated previously, you would be better off finding a RS that defends the pre- 1979 Chomsky/Herman position on Cambodia rather than trying to cherry pick qualifiers like "we do not pretend to know where the truth lies".

The Economist forcefully endorsed the Ponchaud/Barron/Paul thesis on Cambodia, with the "analysis" cited by Herman and Chomsky being a reader's letter to editor. (From this, they imply that all sophisticated readers understand the propaganda about democide is nonsense for the trailer trash masses.)

These claims, whatever their merit, bear zero relation to my points.

A comment made by a State Department official during the genocide that "we cannot estimate a figure" is not the same as 25,000 killed.

The Twining quotes in fact are as follows: "very honestly, I think we can't accurately estimate a figure." and, the numbers killed were in the "thousands or hundreds of thousands". Thus it is entirely correct to characterize H & C:s rendering of Twining they way I did above, namely, as "claiming that the casualty figure guessed at at the time was in fact closer to 1% of McGovern's claim". Stress the word "guessed at".

No RS believes the death toll was inflated by a factor of 100.

We are not discussing the actual death toll. We are discussing how McGovern's claims about deaths compare to authoritative estimates available at the time of writing, not what was learned after the fact.

McGovern's estimates were, in fact, close to the truth.

Nonsense. Nobody sane believes that 2.5 mil were "systematically slaughtered or starved by their own rulers". Certainly not Ben Kiernan. And in any case, it is not relevant to our discussion.

The "muderous thugs" quote is the argument Chomsky and Herman attempt to rebut in After the Cataclysm, not a direct quote from McGovern.

I noticed you removed the quote, so this point is moot. However, I still think you characterize the discussion in a deceptive manner.

However, I believe McGovern actually cited an estimate of up to 2.5 million killed (you haven't provided a source for your quote). We also do not need 5 quotes to describe this controversy.TheTimesAreAChanging

I did indeed provide a source. Pp. 138-39. McGovern's estimate is not a "citation", just a wild invention.

And please respond to my specific claim about the Ear thesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zweig23 (talk • contribs) 01:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

And also, about your Economist rant, this is just blowing smoke. The dispute actually concerns the following:

Your rendering of H & C:

"Referring to 'the extreme unreliablity of refugee reports,' "

What the text actually says:

"such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, [who] testify to the extreme unreliability of refugee reports".

Your quote thus amounts to more deceptive innuendo.

If you think that H & C misrepresented the Economist in the article in question, you need to provide some actual argument, rather than just throw a hissyfit about it. It is evident in the article that the "analysis" in the Economist comes in the form of a "reader's letter", and not just any reader, but a guy who worked as a statistician for the government of Cambodia, i e, just about as "highly qualified" a "specialist" as you can possibly get. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zweig23 (talk • contribs) 02:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Chomsky and Herman were not merely being selective with the evidence, but creative with the evidence. They cite a journalists' report relying on a statement by Pol Pot, a reader's letter to the editor, and an essay by a leftist student in an undergraduate magazine as though they are in confident possession of evidence proving the innocence of the Khmer Rouge; they mention "repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false". Chomsky and Herman lead the reader to expect that the sources they cite said something like "I went to the village that was widely reported to have been massacred, and the people there told me they were just fine." They lead us to expect that these "neglected sources" discredit the reports of enormous crimes, rather than merely whining about them. Chanda's claim was not that he had evidence that the Khmer Rouge were innocent, but that if we ignore all the evidence indicating they are guilty, there is not much evidence that they are guilty--a position that might perhaps have been defensible when Chanda wrote in 1976, but had become untenable when Chomsky and Herman wrote in 1977. Sampson's claim was merely that he had not encountered evidence that the Khmer Rouge were guilty--a claim which was surely true, for whether one finds evidence depends on how hard one looks.
Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline and forensic data fron Craig Etcheson (as well as the house-to-house survey conducted by the PRK) strongly suggest that Kiernan's estimate is far too low and that the death toll was in excess of 2 million (and between 7 and 17 times the death toll of the entire Cambodian civil war). (BTW, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Laotians were murdered by the communists, not "close to zero".)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:40, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
You seem to think that the death toll was hugely exaggerated or that Chomsky and Herman's work accurately reflected the best scholarship of the time, but I'm not here to debate that with you; we have to remain focused on this article. You want to add POV in the form of statements like "McGovern's estimate was baseless" or "Sophal Ear cites no evidence". That is not appropriate. You clearly want the text to take Chomsky and Herman's side in the dispute.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:40, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Your fanciful interpretation of Chanda, Sampson, etc, based on no evidence, just more ranting is no concern of mine. This is not the point. The point is what Herman and Chomsky say about the reliability of refugee reports in the article "Distortions at Fourth Hand". You deceptively give the impression that they state out of the blue that these reports are "extremely unreliable", when in reality this is a position they attribute to the "analyses" cited. Whether or not that is an accurate rendering of the articles is something that can be legitimately discussed but I repeat that I would like to see some actual evidence. Anyway, it's beside the point.

It's you, not me that started making factual assertions about the actual death toll. I don't want to debate this either. I take nobody's "side" in the "dispute" for the simple reason that there is no actual dispute regarding Cambodia between Herman & Chomsky and other authors. The reality of the matter, that you are desperately trying to evade, is that there is a "controversy" contrived by ideologues like yourself attempting to insinuate that H & C were in any way apologetic about Pol Pot through the extremely deceptive use of quotations, such as the ones exemplified in the Herman article you edited. As I have repeatedly given evidence to show, in reality H & C were harsh critics of Pol Pot, but this fact doesn't conform to the little agenda of your ilk.

And note that I made a qualification regarding McGovern. I quoted Herman and Chomsky as saying that McGovern "provided no source" for his claim. That is not POV. Furthermore, minimal honesty dictates that if you are going to include in the article the very serious accusations made by some "assistant professor", these charges would have to be accompanied by some kind of empirical support. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.32.87.142 (talk) 02:37, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

That's not true. You originally added the word "baseless" as a neutral descriptor for McGovern's claims. Sophal Ear cites plenty of evidence for his claims. I have no idea what you mean by "empirical support".TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Anyway, I've made some changes to the article that give a better overview of their book, and included one of the quotes you wanted to add.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 13:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I originally wrote "baseless" and I am sorry about that. I later replaced it with an actual source as I pointed out. If Sophal Ear cited plenty of evidence, why don't you include some in the Herman article? I would love to see it as I'm sure any other Wikipedia reader would. By "empirical support" I mean a citation of some textual material indicating that Ear's claims have some sort of correlation to real phenomena.

I am glad to see you included the "gruesome" quote but I still have several objections to the article in its present form. I will list them below and invite you to accept or reject them, preferably with an objective motivation. Insofar as we find ourselves disagreeing after this, I suggest we submit our dispute for 3O.

OK, here goes:

PROPOSED ALTERATIONS TO THE CONTENT FOUND UNDER THE HEADING "HERMAN AND CHOMSKY" Saturday, 12 April, 4:12:38 GMT

1. Para 3, sentence 3 (the first part), should be replaced with:

"They wrote that reports in such publications as the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Economist testify to the 'extreme unreliability of refugee reports', as well as noting: 'Refugees are frightened..."

MOTIVATION: It would be misleading to suggest as the sentence does, in its current form, that they claimed that refugee reports were "extremely unreliable" without pointing out that they invoked sources, rightly or wrongly, to support that judgment.

2. Para 3, final sentence, should be either removed or replaced with: "They concluded by stating that the above-mentioned reports suggested that postwar Cambodia might be more closely comparable to 'France after liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months' than Nazi Germany."

MOTIVATION: The sentence in its current form is factually inaccurate. If one reads the text, one discovers that Herman and Chomsky did not claim that the situation "might be more closely comparable to 'France after liberation' ". What they actually wrote was that the "analyses mentioned earlier" suggest that the conclusion might be correct. It also needs to be emphasized that the France analogy was not intended positively (it was referring to the massacre of thousands). Otherwise the quote is misleading.

3. Para 4, sentence 2, should be altered so as to remove the passage "but questioned their scale, which may have been inflated 'by a factor of 100' ".

MOTIVATION: This claim is factually inaccurate as well as slanderous. At page 138 in After the Cataclysm they did not in any way suggest that the scale of atrocities may have been inflated by a factor of 100. What they actually did was speculate on the hypothetical scenario in which this were the case, without asserting anything regarding the facts.

4. Para 4, sentence 3. The passage "They further asserted that Khmer Rouge policies 'may actually have saved many lives,' " should be either removed or replaced with: "They further asserted that if the analysis of Washington Post correspondent Lewis Simons was correct, then 'the evacuation of Phnom Penh [by the Khmer Rouge] may actually have saved many lives.' "

MOTIVATION: The sentence in its current form is factually incorrect. Herman and Chomsky made no claim regarding the veracity of the account of Simons. Rather, they stated what to conclude in the hypothetical scenario that Simons were right, hence the word "if". It is also misleading to write that the claim was about "Khmer Rouge policies", in general, saving many lives. What might have saved many lives (if and only if Simons was right), they suggested, was the very specific KR policy of the evacuation of Phnom Penh, which should therefore be included in the text.

5. Para 4, sentence 3. The passage "and suggested there may have been 'a significant degree of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge' " should be replaced with "and suggested that 'one conceivable hypothesis does not seem to have been considered, even to be rejected: that there was a significant degree of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge and the measures that they had instituted in the countryside.' "

MOTIVATION: The sentence in its current form is not entirely false, yet is grossly misleading unless you inlcude the relevant context.

6. Para 4, sentence 3. The quote "How can it be that that a population so oppressed by a handful of fanatics does not rise up and overthrow them?" should either be removed or replaced with the following passage: "Commenting on the claim by US Senator George McGovern that 'an estimated two million innocent Cambodians are systematically slaughtered or starved by their own rulers' [p. 138], for which McGovern, according to Herman and Chomsky 'provided no source' [p. 151], they raised some questions about the plausibility of this picture. Specifically: 'How can it be that that a population so oppressed by a handful of fanatics does not rise up and overthrow them?' "

MOTIVATION: The quote, presented in isolation from relevant context, is grossly misleading. Specifically, it gives the erroneous impression that the claim in question expressed skepticism about KR oppression in general, while in reality, the skepticism was aimed at something very specific, namely the McGovern version of events.

7. Para 4, final sentence. The passage: "Herman defended himself" should be replaced with "Herman stated".

MOTIVATION: The locution makes no sense. "Defended himself" against what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.32.85.223 (talk) 05:32, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

That the KR "may have saved lives" is a constant theme throughout the book. Consider the passages where Chomsky and Herman praise their economic and agricultural policies, which they (absurdly) say had "spectacular success", as well their claim that 1 million Cambodians were predicted to starve to death due to the conditions left by "the US war". The prediction actually referred to the likely death toll from the communist takeover, especially the death march from Phnom Penh--but if their most extreme arguments are accepted, the KR "liberation" would actually have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. This was something noted by one of our sources, Bruce Sharp.
Everyone knows that Chomsky/Herman cite sources for their claims, albeit in an often misleading manner. Quotes like "factor of 100" speak for themselves. No honest observer thought only 25,000 died under the KR. In addition, the McGovern "version of events" was in fact the truth.
We cannot summarize the whole book, so I would have to object to your proposal. In some cases, I cannot see how your wording makes Chomsky/Herman look much better; in other cases, your text sounds grossly partisan, essentially repeating as fact the arguments they make in the book. Remember that this article is a biography and the book should be summarized; there are plenty of ludicrous quotes I haven't added. Finally, this article should focus on what Chomsky/Herman said, not what they quoted others as saying.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 14:31, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
I have made a few changes based on your comments here.
Plenty of people who reviewed After the Cataclysm, like Stephen J. Morris, did interpret it as saying the KR only killed 25,000 people. In After the Cataclysm, the KR are described as "victims of France and the United States," whose violence is a "direct and understandable response" to "the still more extreme savagery of the US assault". In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky/Herman completely change their argument: "The responsibility of the US and Pol Pot for atrocities in Cambodia appears to be roughly in the same range". Likewise, there's no mention of East Timor in "Distortions at Fourth Hand," the premise of which is straightforward: The media is distorting the truth about Cambodia.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:12, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Your latest post did not relate at all to my criticism, so I won't comment. Just for the record, I take strong exception to your reading of After the Cataclysm. I take it you reject all of my proposals. So, do you agree to formal 3O? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.32.84.21 (talk) 04:35, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Non-neutral article

All of the talk above would seem to indicate that people MIT be a little to heavily invested in this all to really produce an NPOV article, and I think,I unfortunately, the article shows this. - 124.191.144.183 (talk) 12:50, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The above editor has queried the neutrality of this article by adding the appropriate template. What alternative sources are in existence to suggest Herman's arguments are credible is unclear at present. After six months since the last contribution to 'Pol Pot sympathizer (sic)' section, I have taken the liberty of inserting a new section heading. Philip Cross (talk) 16:09, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I think the article is not balanced. Herman's relatively obscure views on Cambodia are detailed at length. Meanwhile, Manufacturing Constent - which, as the article itself states, is his most well-known book - is dealt with in two sentences. Aquila89 (talk) 00:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I have made an effort to address the balance issues on this page, particularly in the praise and criticism for Herman's work section. For instance, because the section addresses The Politics of Genocide, I have renamed that section, because the previous title, which said that the section encompassed criticism and praise for his "work", was clearly misleading. Furthermore, I have cited an endorsement of his book by an eminent political philosopher. On top of that, I have highlighted both George Monbiot's criticism of Herman as well as Herman's reply, so that readers can make their own mind up concerning this debate. Vidur10 (talk) 11:23, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
A mention of the Srebrenica Research Group had been deleted by an IP user. This has gained some comment in reliable sources, so should be mentioned in the article. As the section is not wholly about The Politics of Genocide, the change in section title was misleading. I have reverted this, as well as restoring the citations to articles by Marko Atilla Hoare and Gerald Caplan, who are mainstream specialists on the Balkans and Africa respectively. Philip Cross (talk) 11:42, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with the renaming of the section. However, I've made a slight adjustment to the sentences in which Hoare, Kaplan and others are mentioned: "in the words of" implies that Wikipedia is itself taking a view on why the Srebrenica Research Group was formed, even though the notion that it was formed to deny that that the massacre never happened is a claim. I've made it clear that these are the opinions of these specialists, in short. I've also re-included the citation to the endorsement by Professor Kochler, himself a highly respected expert in the field of international relations, to provide more balance to this article, which others, as evidenced above, have found to be lacking. Vidur10 (talk) 13:22, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
If Köchler must be included, I see no reason why his status should be mentioned, this detail applies to all other academics cited. I have removed the affiliation of Sophal Ear as well so as to be balanced on this. It should be also be clear that his comments are from promotional material for the book, in other words, that they are not exactly third party comments independent of Edward S. Herman. The manuscript was presumably sent to Köchler with the intention of gaining his approval for inclusion in promotional materal. Philip Cross (talk) 13:42, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

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Notes and references

  1. ^ Chomsky's Srebrenica Shame, and the Guardian's... - By British Historian Marko Attila Hoare, The Henry Jackson Society
  2. ^ srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/10/milivoje-ivanisevic-disturbed-mind-of.html Milivoje Ivanisevic's Disturbed Mind of Srebrenica Genocide Denial
  3. ^ Herman, Edward S. (2005-07-07). "The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre". ZNet. Retrieved 2007-12-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Chomsky's Srebrenica Shame, and the Guardian's... - By British Historian Marko Attila Hoare, The Henry Jackson Society
  5. ^ Herman, Edward S. (2005-07-07). "The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre". ZNet. Retrieved 2007-12-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

I've moved this passage here so that it can be made balanced. At this point, there's not even a vague attempt to describe Herman's position, yet the passage leaves the impression that he is a holocaust denier - which is absurd and slanderous. Expansion of this article should be conducted in a balanced and comprehensive manner, not in a scatter-shot manner. Pinkville (talk) 18:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Pinkville, nobody is saying that he is Holocaust denier, please don't twist the facts. He is Srebrenica Genocide denier, and what we want include is his own quote, his own words, that's all. Why is it so hard for you to accept there are Srebrenica genocide deniers, and why are you comparing genocide with Holocaust? You are well aware of the involvement and failures of your Dutch troops in Srebrenica, arent you? Do you have agenda here? I am not accusing you of anything, but I am simply curious, and when I am curious, I ask direct questions. LeeCorrie (talk) 21:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll start with your question "why are you comparing genocide with Holocaust?" Um, yes. Because the Holocaust was genocidal. The slaughter of the native peoples of the Americas was also a genocide. The killing of one third of the population of East Timor by invading Indonesian forces was genocidal. And so on. The word "genocide" has a specific meaning, it doesn't merely mean "the killing of a lot of people". Yes, we should have Herman's own words - up to this point no serious attempt has been made to provide Herman's position, instead, he has simply been tarred with this "genocide denier" brush. As I stated earlier, there's no problem including information on this issue in the article, but it has to be presented fairly. You can't present the criticism of a position that hasn't been represented. And "Srebrenica Genocide denier" misrepresents Herman's position and misrepresents the events themselves. Finally, I haven't the faintest idea what you mean by "the involvement and failures of your Dutch troops in Srebrenica" - I'm Canadian, not Dutch. Either way, what has that got to do with an article on Edward Herman? I do have an agenda, which is to help provide a NPOV biography of one of the most important media analysts of our time. Pinkville (talk) 16:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
LeeCorrie,
  1. By including a subsection titled "Srebrenica Genocide Denial" you are stating that he is "genocide denier"
  2. Criticism of Herman's position/views on the Srebrenica massacre should only be presented once his own position/view has been presented (in a POV way).
  3. If you are to call him a "Srebrenica genocide denier" (or "genocide denier" for that matter) you must find a credible source which provides this. This does not include selfpublished websites or discussion forums.
Osli73 (talk) 16:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Criticism can come from blogs or anywhere, it doesn't have to be Reuters or AP. Don't apply double standards for Srebrenica genocide article and then come here with new rules. Bosniak (talk) 19:48, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry? Excuse me? The no-relying-on-blogs is not a new rule, it is Wikipedia Policy. And It has been for the 8-odd years I have been here. How do you see a double standard there? Schissel | Sound the Note! 03:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits (Jan 2)

I've reverted the insertion of negative, contentious content about a living person, sourced to a self-published blog post and commentary piece. What, exactly, is the Wikipedia editor trying to convey to Wikipedia readers with this content addition, and where are the policy-compliant, high-quality sources which are required to accompany such content? Xenophrenic (talk) 03:32, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The two articles by Oliver Kamm are from his blog for the London Times newspaper. Blogs from established publications are admissible (see Identiftying reliable sources) because they will already have been checked for any legal problemsThe Bosnia Institute which reprinted one of them is a registered charity in the UK. I should mention that I added "accused" when I reverted your removal of the additional material. The articles are both more than six years old, and Herman an Peterson will be aware of them. Where is their writ for defamation against multiple individuals who compare them to Holocaust deniers? Philip Cross (talk) 09:20, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
I would recommend reading our policy on reliable sources a little more carefully. Self-published blogs, as well as commentary/opinion blogs published in newspapers, may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact about a living person. "The Bosnia Institute" is only a charity, not a news organization, which makes my point. Adding to a Wikipedia article that "Philip Cross beats his dog" based on an opinion piece is unacceptable, and is equally unacceptable even if we add "accused", and is equally unacceptable if Mr. Cross hasn't filed a writ for defamation. If you feel the content you wish to add about this living person is encyclopedic, verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in sources deemed by Wikipedia as reliable for the assertion of fact. You are welcome, of course, to raise the issue at the BLP Noticeboard for further clarification. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 17:16, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
@Xenophrenic: Its not the most clear cut issue, but I agree. The are a number of issues with the Kamm reference. 1) it's an inflammatory statement that is paraphrased at length 2) It's a blog 3) it's Oliver Kamm, a shrill character whose careers have been investment banking and polemics. 4)it exists in the context of an article is already harshly critical of Herman. So I see no reason to scrape the bottom of the barrel (a shrill blog post by a polemicist) in order to compound the already serious POV and weight problems of this article.Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

What he said

@Smallchief: The text in question: Khmer Rouge agricultural policies reportedly produced "spectacular" results, and there might have been "a significant degree of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge": "How can it be that a population so oppressed by a handful of fanatics does not rise up and overthrow them?"

I don't think "spectacular" and "How can it be [...]" serve any purpose beyond skewering Herman and leading the reader by the nose. The article already presents "After the Cataclysm" in an exceedingly unfavorable light, and there is no need to push that POV any further with selective quotation. The entire sentence is a pastiche of quotes picked from various parts of the chapter, designed to make their argument appear as facile as possible.

(reportedly) "spectacular" is not how Hermans/Chomsky's put it: "even including a surplus for export, according to the regime; an achievement that U.S. specialists describe as "spectacular" if true." The full passage sounds less far-fetched.

"How can it be [...]": This puts undue emphasis on a rhetorical question, as if that was Chomsky/Herman's substantive argument for the KR enjoying "a significant degree of popular support". A quick read of that page will verify that it's not. In any neutral article, you'd have a chance to hear the substantive argument, citing Douglas Pike and others. But there is no space in the article to flesh out C/H's argument, so it's better to just state their main points and be done with it. In any case, we now know - thanks to the Vietnamese invasion - that the KR has very little popular support (through this did not stop someone like Douglas Pike describing Pol Pot as a "brutal but popular leader" (quoting from memory, but have source), or Nate Thayer from foolishly talking up the KR's "popular support" as late as early 1990's. But I don't see those quotes prominently featured in articles about Thayer or Pike).

So I propose this a more neutral alternative: "Khmer Rouge agricultural policies reportedly yielded positive results, and that there might have been "a significant degree of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge". Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I can't find, although it might exist, the word "spectacular" directly attributable to Chomsky and Herman, so perhaps you're right and the word should be taken out. However, I don't favor letting Chomsky and Herman off the hook for a spectacularly inaccurate appraisal of the Khmer Rouge. Academics should be responsible for their opinions -- just as politicians are -- and Chomsky's prominence and influence mean his opinions deserve critical examination. Smallchief (talk 15:51, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
@Smallchief: "Spectacular" indeed cannot be directly attributed to Chomsky (as the full quote illustrates). A good rule of thumb is to use quotes to present the argument as the authors intended it to be presented. If you stick to that rule you are not letting anyone off the hook, unless you are afraid their substantive argument may be indeed be correct (and given our current knowledge of the DK period, such a fear is baseless). More broadly, "letting them off the hook" would involve rewriting the entire section from the opposite POV, which is certainly not what I am proposing. Cheers!Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Hoan's numbers

@TheTimesAreAChanging: There are too many questions that come to mind, so Human Events won't do.

  • It's a paraphrase not a direct quote.
  • The 50-100K range refers to imprisonment in other sources (e.g. Butterfield). I would not be surprised if Human Events just "interpreted" the number as referring to executions.
  • Did Hoan really "testify" to this number?
  • I can't even find where Chomsky/Herman dispute these numbers. Since Chomsky/Herman do discuss Hoan at length, it is surprising that they overlooked these shocking numbers. And if they did overlook them, that would make them irrelevant to the article.

So yes it's quite possibly fake, and probably irrelevant. Seems like someone added to show just how evil the Vietnamese Commies, and by extension Chomsky/Herman, were. You can check "After the Cataclysm" yourself (free copies from libgen etc) , on the off-chance that I have missed it.

I think, as a rule, that rags like Human Events should be inadmissible on Wikipedia (just like GlobalResearch and FrontpageMag). Not only does it open up loopholes for errors and lies, but it also encourages contributions by lazy and biased editors who can't even be bothered to read the mainstream press (never mind the scholarly literature). People often use them to "cite" fraudulent claims, because they can't find the proper documentation. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:27, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

And if Chomsky/Herman did cite the "50-100K executed" (doubtful), what's the point of the Human Events reference? So you see, when you stop think about it, it's really hard to think of a single good reason to cite a crappy source. It's either redundant or it's fraudulent. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Of course Chomsky and Herman omit Hoan's most serious accusations while throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him to damage his credibility—just as they criticized Butterfield for his "drab" depiction of post-war Vietnam, which they expected to be lavishly praised as a paradise of reconciliation and social justice. (As others have noted, the "American system of thought control and indoctrination" is a curiously feeble one if it merely accuses a hostile enemy dictatorship of being "drab".) Per the source, Hoan estimated 200,000 individuals were then imprisoned in re-education camps and one million or more deported to "New Economic Zones". (I don't think Chomsky and Herman cite those numbers, either.) You can take Human Events to WP:RSN if you like, but Chomsky and Herman don't get to set the parameters of this discussion by omitting the actual content of the testimony they so vociferously attacked.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I see you are not even trying to show the relevance or verify the supposed quote. And there's nothing "damaging" about really big numbers getting thrown about. Chomsky discussed Chi who claimed fantastic numbers for land reform. "Chomsky and Herman don't get to set the parameters of this discussion" - that's meaningless handwaving.Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:10, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
@TheTimesAreAChanging:. Added the actual testimony which - surprise, surprise - say nothing about 50-100K estimated executions. It seems significant chunks of the article had been written by some Boghanador-bot (lifting the text straight from his crackpot site), and this was one of the remaining chunks.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:55, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Why not a comment at the end of the Vietnam section referencing scholars such as Desbarats who have quantified substantial repression in Vietnam after the communist victory? This section as now written leaves the question hanging: was there or was there not widespread repression, executions, etc? The evidence says there was and that fact should be acknowledged. Smallchief (talk 13:22, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't think this is appropriate. Desbarat's conclusions were heterodox: it was NOT commonly accepted that a bloodbath occurred after the liberation/fall of Saigon. In fact, when she published her findings in the mid-1980's, the WSJ reported something like "So there was a Bloodbath, After All". Furthermore her findings got close to zero traction among scholars, the one exception being Stephen J. Morris (who had not published ANYTHING serious at that point) and Rummel (well, you know about him). The serious scholars that had discussed Desbarats, have trashed her conclusions. These include Edwin Moise, and a joint paper by Porter and some mathematician, where they refuted Desbarats' shaky "statistical" methodology. By that time, Porter had already written a critical and very thorough book on Vietnam (Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism). The inclusion of hysterical numbers, cited on Boghanador's site, is both FRINGE and UNDUE here. Let's not compound the problems of this article by "debating" Herman with nonsense. The existence of mass repression and a substantial number of executions is one thing, Desbarats saying that 100K people were shot is something else entirely. Guccisamsclub (talk) 13:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I should add that it's completely wrong-headed (classic OR) to assemble works not strictly related to "Political Economy of Human Rights", in an attempt to disprove its conclusions. So Hoan's terminony is acceptable and Desbarats is completely beyond the pale. An encyclopedia is not a place to debate Chomsky and Herman. Guccisamsclub (talk) 14:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Citing Gareth Porter as "reliable source" while trashing Desbarats strikes me as ideological bias. (Note that Desbarats worked at UC Berkeley, hardly a hotbed of anti-communist ideologues.) Porter's complaint against Desbarats was that she relied on the testimony of refugees -- which of course is what Porter also said in denying the Cambodian genocide. Porter says, "Refugees can't be trusted." Note to Porter: You shouldn't believe the propaganda of governments -- even those governments you approve of.
Porter has no credibility, but Moise is worthy of consideration. Please cite where it is in a scholarly article that he discounts the death toll in Vietnam in the post-1975 period.
How it is that you can cite Hoan as an acceptable source (even though he had an obvious self-interest in what he said) as compared to a scholarly study by Desbarats is a mystery to me. I would say that both have a certain amount of credibility. Please explain.
I don't consider Desbarat's estimate of 65,000 (later raised to 100,000) executions in South Vietnam in the 1975-1985 period to be excessive. It is a fact that hundreds of thousands -- perhaps as many as 2.5 million South Vietnamese -- spent time, often years, in reeducation camps. Even Porter admits that. It is a undoubted fact that considerable resistance existed among the million or more urban dwellers who were relocated to rural areas. It is a fact that the Vietnamese government was especially repressive toward the Hoa (Sino-Vietnamese) minority which controlled much of the private sector in Saigon. It is a fact that the 2-3 million people who fled or attempted to flee South Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s didn't leave because they were loving the Vietnamese government. Smallchief (talk 15:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
@Smallchief: I forgot to answer you question re: Desbarats vs Hoan. The key difference is that Hoan is directly relevant to the article, since his testimony was discussed in C/H and Desbarats was not. His testimony also appears more notable by virtue of the fact that the US press and members of Congress gave much publicity to such accounts.@Gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 22:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
@Smallchief: Debarats' estimate is based on an extrapolation from a sample of refugees in a couple of areas. Her conclusions are both shocking and heterodox. How often has her work been cited in scholarly journals? How often have serious scholars come up with similar numbers? I do not understand this desire to put numbers which have not been vetted into an encyclopedia, especially in places where they are UNDUE, if not irrelevant. We don't need to pretend we can quantify something on which there is no widely accepted data, and no standard encyclopedia would do so. To claim that 100K were shot, one obscure reference is not enough - the conclusion must be widely accepted and it must be easy to find other scholarly sources. Again, it is absolutely clear that Desbarats work was challenging received wisdom, so by giving weight to her estimate you are going against much of mainstream scholarship. Desbarats' numbers are as startling as those of Van Chi on land reform: both require much more evidence before they become material for an encyclopedia. But there is a crucial difference between Chi and Desbarats: Chi's work was widely accepted and cited, but Desbarats' work lacks any notability whatsoever. So citing Desbarats would be far less acceptable than citing Chi's numbers on land reform. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
As for Porter's paper (again written jointly with a mathematician), its point is that - regardless of their authenticity - Desparats' method of extrapolation is statistically flawed. Moise endorsed Porter over Desbarats in his Vietnam war bibliograpy (not exactly a "source", but presumably we care about his opinion). In the 1980's, Porter was very far from uncritical toward Vietnam, which is amply illustrated in is "Vietnam: Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism". The war was over, so there was no longer a reason to focus on critiquing American war rhetoric. And it is wrong to dismiss Porter's work on Vietnam simply because, like many others, he initially refused to accept that the KR's policies resulted in the deaths of millions. On Vietnam, Porter's work is widely cited and discussed - as any search in google scholar will show. In contrast, people like Desbarats and Morris are basically no-marks in the field (though they do get a lot of hits on google search, thanks to Wikipedia and Bognador's repulsive website). Yet, bizarrely they - not to mention a rag like Human Events - are considered perfectly acceptable and Porter is considered off-limits. It's positively Orwellian. Discussing the repressive character of the SRV is fine, but it must me done in a non-hysterical way. If you can do it without scraping www.paulbogdanor.com or "The Anti-Chomsky Reader" for references, I will only applaud your efforts. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:32, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
BTW, who exactly is proposing citing Porter instead of Desbarats? Porter does not pretend to know the real number of executions, so there isn't even a number from Porter and co-author to cite.Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
You're the one who mentioned Porter, not me. Smallchief (talk 17:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
A word about the journal (The Washington Quarterly) that published Desbarats/Jackson piece. It is non-peer-reviewed publication, whose audience and contributors are Washington opinion and policy-makers. Henry Kissinger was a contributor in the 1980's. So it's basically the voice of the American political establishment, not a traditional scholarly journal. Make of it what you will.Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:07, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Attempting to discredit the source is the oldest debating tactic in the world. Jacqueline Desbarats is a demographer who has published over the past 30 years many peer-reviewed articles about Indochinese refugees -- and her articles have been cited frequently. Her co-author on at least one article was Karl D. Jackson who is a distinguished scholar. There is nothing "shocking" about Desbarats conclusions.Smallchief (talk 17:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Consider this, from "War & Aftermath In Vietnam":
"Although the bloodbath anticipated by some in the West thankfully never materialized after reunification, thousands of people
were placed in re-education camps. Military leaders, important civil
servants and an assortment of characters that the new regime considered
to be politically undesirable were detained, some for many years. There
are constant reports of inadequate conditions in Vietnamese prisons and
abuse of human rights. Doan Van Toai, in his book The Vietnamese
Gulag, has given a graphic and horrifying description of life in
detention.
That's basically the standard interpretation of what happened. Desbarats thinks it's a complete lie, and that Vietnam had its own killing fields after the war, and pretends to be able to quantify the number of skulls. Her conclusions on this issue have been largely ignored, with the exception of a strong mathematical critique of her methodology (have you read the critique even?). But you nonetheless want to use her conclusions to characterize post-War Vietnam (wildly undue), and to dispute Chomsky/Herman (strictly OR). Well you have to choose: its either sensationalistic revisionism (and one that gives readers a false sense of certainty about the scale of the repression) or the mainstream. Again I encourage you to take the high road and try to find alternative sources (i.e. stuff one can't find by going to paulbognador.com). You should have no problem doing so, if the claims you plan to insert into the article are extensively documented. By insisting on Desbarats, you are conceding they are not. Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Of the million or so books about Vietnam, you have picked one of the most obscure to cite. Who is T. Louise Brown? Who has read his or her book? I don't find any reviews of the book and and it ranks 9,200,000 on Amazon's list of best sellers. It may be a great book -- but who knows? And you're complaining about fringe sources? Smallchief (talk 18:19, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, its gets more citations on google scholar than DEsbarats :). Was her article a bestseller? But that's besides the point. The point is that T. Louise Brown's view is the mainstream one, while Desbarats' view represents a striking departure from the mainstream. How do I know this? Because Desbarats - and those who cite her article - say so and because you seem to have trouble finding RS's t support your view, besides those hand-picked by Paul Boghanador. I dunno about you but 100K is an exceptional claim that requires exceptional evidence, from a variety of sources. Somehow you realized that when you wrote up your Land Reform article, but refuse to acknowledge the problem here, where it's even more extreme. I also wonder how you will get around the OR problem inherent in inserting Desbarats into the article. I feel like I am just repeating myself now, so I encourage you to look over my argument and proposed solution a second time and take from it what you will. Cheers!Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
While I believe tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals died in connection with North Vietnam's "land reform", I am skeptical that there were mass executions in post-war Vietnam. I believe that those on the Right who extrapolated from the land reform and the Hue massacre (in which 10-15% of the population of Hue was slaughtered) in order to predict that hundreds of thousands or even millions of South Vietnamese would be massacred if Saigon fell erred, and that Le Duan (who represented the moderate pro-business wing of the communist party) opted instead for re-education of potential enemies with only a small number of outright executions. While I'm certainly not an expert in statistics, I find the critique of the Desbarats-Jackson study by Roberts and Porter convincing (Bruce Sharp, who runs a great website on Cambodian history and has a very solid knowledge of statistics, endorsed their argument when I emailed him about it over a year ago, for whatever that's worth), although (to their credit) Porter and Roberts do not make any blanket statement to the effect that if Desbarats and Jackson are wrong then there must not have been any executions at all. That said, I am fairly certain that Hoan did give those numbers and doubt that Human Events made it up. Notwithstanding Chomsky's comments on "the case of the missing bloodbath", there certainly were allegations of a bloodbath, some more extreme in their conclusions than Desbarats or Hoan. (The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, published by Oxford University Press in 2009, states: "The Vietnamese communists' most aggressive campaign of violence followed the fall of Saigon in 1975. In the subsequent 18 months, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 persons were executed and more than 2 million suspected 'dissidents' were imprisoned, making up almost 7 percent of the 30 million residents in the southern part of the nation where this campaign was concentrated.") While such extreme claims are lacking in supporting evidence, in light of the massive use of slave labor in the "new economic zones", the starvation and torture endured by an estimated one million prisoners in the "re-education" camps, and the ethnic cleansing of the Chinese community it is hard to defend Chomsky and Herman's praise for post-war Vietnam as "a miracle of reconciliation and restraint".TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
@TheTimesAreAChanging: An interesting contribution, TTAAC. I've also read parts of The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, and the numbers it gives for the post-1975 bloodbath struck me as being unfounded. As for Hoan's testimony, you're welcome to search for the 50-100K range (which in other sources refers to imprisonment). But since we do have his actual testimony, that'll have to do for now, in lieu of another RS. I don't think anyone here can speak authoritatively on the New Economic Zones and Reeducation, but I don't think those issues are as clear cut as you make them out to be. The New Economic Zones were not necessarily slave labor camps, at least not in any conventional sense of the term. Do you mean that people were not completely free to leave? In that case, the Kolhozes in Russia were also "slave labor". I've had family members who were kolhozniks and it was nothing like slave labor. The new generations eventually moved to the cities (taking the old generation with them) and became engineers. South Vietnam was in serious crisis after the war, and people naturally had to move out of Saigon in search of work - any work. I doubt many had to be forced to leave for the NEZ's at gunpoint (like in Cambodia). The migration patterns were dictated by economic forces, not AK-47s. For more on NEZ's, skip Rummel and read Banister. As for "Reeducation Camps", it is simply not true that "Reeducation" and "Camps" were one and the same. Reeducation was often short and frequently took place without any imprisonment. Camps were a separate matter: people were stayed and worked there for years, often in inhospitable and malaria-infested environments. There is no need to conflate the two. @Gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 23:31, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't consider Hoan a particularly reliable source. Much of what he said was hearsay, albeit credible. The problem with this article is that it does not balance Chomsky and Herman's rosy picture of post-VIetnam War Indochina with the picture painted by many authorities and backed up in real life by the massive number of refugees who fled the country from 1975 and into the 1990s. A sentence in the article will suffice. "Chomsky and Herman's book was published in 1979, the same year in which hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people fled their country for political and economic reasons to seek refuge in other countries." That seems an uncontroversial and undeniably true statement that is verifiable by a large number of sources.
To not include a qualifier to Chomsky and Herman's analysis is similar to writing an article about someone who claimed that the moon is made out of green cheese without mentioning that many authorities do not agree with the green cheese theory.Smallchief (talk 00:03, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
@Smallchief: Your "Chomsky and Herman's book was published in 1979, the same year in which hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people fled their country for political and economic reasons to seek refuge in other countries." is fine and factual, though I am not sure it's something Chomsky/Herman would dispute. One recommendation I would make is to substitute "economic, as well as political", because economic considerations did in fact predominate over political ones. But you are on the right path, I think. @Gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 00:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
In the early days of the Vietnamese exodus, until at least mid-1979 (when Chomsky and Herman wrote their book), the primary motive for leaving Vietnam was clearly political -- and desperate, because the refugees departed with no insight on what might be their fate. Nobody is going to face hazards like they faced because they're looking for a better job. They were oppressed. Part of that oppression was that they had deprived of their property and livelihood in Vietnam, but they didn't leave to seek economic opportunity abroad. They left because conditions in Vietnam were intolerable for them because of their ethnicity, religion, or former associations. That's political.Smallchief (talk
Well South Vietnam was on the verge of famine from 75-80 and the country was devastated. "Looking for a better job" is a terrible understatement. But of course people do also leave for "better jobs", and yet are assigned political refugee status. For example, the Jewish half of my family left the USSR because they knew they could earn more in America (but that was certainly NOT what they put down in their application). Not trying to split hairs or anything, I just think its an interesting topic. @gucci81.88.116.27 (talk) 00:53, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Please explain why your recent edits say in the history: "Tag: possible userspace spam" What does that mean? Smallchief (talk 02:12, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Probably because he was editing as an IP and Wikipedia automatically tags IP and mobile edits that might constitute vandalism for review? It doesn't really matter.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:08, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

reactions to sebrenica and rwanda

In my opinion, this section should expose shortly the point of view developped in "Politics of genocide" on Srebenica and Rwanda, and expose altogether the reactions it raised. In the present version, there is no short account on what is said about these two events. Reneza (talk) 06:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the article does summarize Herman and Petersen's insane views on those events.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:31, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree, I tried to reorganize separating beetween Srebenica and Rwanda, and hierarchizing beetween "ordinary" authors - non specialists - statements and the analysis of specialized scholars on the subject. Surely it can be improved. Reneza (talk) 04:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Edward S. Herman has died

User: Wayneswhirld (talk) says Ed Herman died on Saturday based on a family connection. He made this assertion for the first time nearly two days ago, but there is currently no online source, apart from a tweet which appears to be from David Swanson. Philip Cross (talk) 17:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

No RS yet, but this is confirmed by some of the websites who had a connection with him. Philip Cross (talk) 09:16, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

CE

Did a small ce with my eyebrows rising at the flagrant polemic masquerading as an article. Keith-264 (talk) 10:22, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Come come Philip, you can do better than that. Lots of people dispute the smears against Herman. Keith-264 (talk) 10:44, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
People in his small circle like Diana Johnstone, no doubt. Any journalists or scholars outside that circle, no. Philip Cross (talk) 11:17, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Do your homework and alter the article to be a sober description of his life and work, not a polemical diatribe against a dissenting academic. I wouldn't juxtapose journalist with scholar either, it's sloppy. Keith-264 (talk) 11:32, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Let us see what other editors have to say. By the way Keith, you might have comments to make here where I am mentioned. Philip Cross (talk) 11:42, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
I suggest that we should look at RS and show how biased the article is.Keith-264 (talk) 12:07, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
PS I don't care who sails under the moniker Philip Cross, it's the quality of the editing that matters and I have found you wanting in the past. I hope that you take a more disinterested line in your editing this time. Keith-264 (talk) 12:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times and The Guardian are considered reliable sources here, quite rightly. I will assume you consider them fake and spurious, but that is not the ruling opinion here. Philip Cross (talk) 14:44, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Quite wrongly, as you can see by looking; The Heil has been dumped and it's no worse than those in your list. Keith-264 (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
@TheTimesAreAChanging: Quoting him giving a different number isn't a demonstration of denial, that's a non sequitur.Keith-264 (talk) 21:27, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Prop9

This editor removed criticism of Herman from this article on July 5. As this material was related to issues raised about Herman's career by mainstream writers it is entirely appropriate. I have restored the cut passages. Philip Cross (talk) 15:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Philip Cross

This editor added material violating NPOV by citing sources out of context (particularly the NYT editor quote, which was used as an example of *censorship* of Chomsky in the cited work) as well as putting in a variety of references to the article body without materially adding to the content of each section (references should go in the end of the article). The offending passages were removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prop9 (talk • contribs) 23:31, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

I disagree with your removal of this cited material, and I feel obliged to point out that you should not remove cited content from articles simply because you find it to be offensive for some reason. Your rationale for removing the content ("references should go in the end of the article") is mistaken. There is no rigid policy dictating how references should be presented in an article and different citation styles and systems can be used.
Additionally, as per my comments on your talk page, you have recently violated the three revert rule and should self-revert. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:37, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
A citation doesn't mean anything if you're pointing to secondary sources and opinion. All of the removed content was either a link to opinion pieces (violating NPOV) or out of context quoting of other work. The removal should stand as it violates NPOV and the use of secondary sources quotes in a way to hide the broader context of the work. Prop9 (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

NPOV dispute:Article

The article as it stands does not meet Wikipedia's standards for NPOV. In particular, the article cites criticism of Herman while ignoring the context in which the citations occur.

For example, the quote "was a pack of lies, a scurrilous attack on respected Americans, undocumented, a publication unworthy of a serious publisher" from Warring Fictions: Cultural Politics and the Vietnam War Narrative is actually a second hand quote from Bagdikian regarding the censorship of Chomsky and Herman. By taking it out of that context the quote --which was originally a sympathetic description of the censorship of Chomsky and Herman-- emphasizes perceived lying.

The first Gitlin quote provides no firsthand refutation of Herman either. It's a private email calling Herman a liar not a refutation about the validity of his work.

The second Gitlin quote "If you think that The New York Times is Pravda, which is essentially what they’re saying, then what vocabulary do you have left for Fox News? Their model is so clumsy that it disables you from distinguishing between a straight-out propaganda network and a more complex, hegemonic mainstream news organ" also states an opinion (violating NPOV) without addressing Chomsky and Herman's refutations.

The Kamm article is also opinion. As is the Monbiot.

To summarize, many of the "citations" in Herman article are just references to opinion pieces and violate NPOV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prop9 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

NPOV does not require that sources be neutral. I do not understand why you feel that professor Gitlin's criticism of Herman, as cited by The New York Times, is somehow invalidated because it was communicated via email. In fact, these objections to well-sourced and long-standing consensus text are so specious that it is hard to accept them at face value as anything other than a pretext for some ulterior agenda.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:06, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
NPOV can incorporate biased sources provided that bias is counterbalanced by other sources. In this case Gitlin is stating an opinion and provides no supporting evidence. It's appropriate for the criticism section but not the body of the article BTW your claims of ulterior motives violate WP:AOBF. Just a warning. Prop9 (talk) 21:50, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Doing justice to Ed’s life

I began corresponding with Ed in the 1990s, and in the last years of his life, I wished him a happy birthday each year. On his last birthday, in April 2017, I noted how execrable his Wikipedia bio was; it was an exercise in disinformation. I offered to write it properly, and Ed took me up on it. Alas, he never lived to see it. I have had plenty of experience with Wikipedia’s “editors” in the past, I am Brian O’Leary’s biographer, and I can live with his Wikipedia bio as it stands today, after battling with the “editors” there for some time. It was not until after Brian died that the Establishment-defenders departed, but the disinformation campaign at Wikipedia that attacks Ed’s memory seems to be alive and well.

I just refreshed my memory of what existed when I made my offer to Ed; it was a bad as I remembered and has not gotten much better since then. Nearly all of Ed’s bio until now was about his writings on “nefarious bloodbaths,” which prominently featured his critics’ calling him a genocide denier and other lies. What a travesty.

My initial Wikipedia bio on Ed is only slightly longer than the main Harry Potter article and a little longer than the page on Noam’s political positions. Ed’s Wikipedia biography as I originally wrote it is the appropriate length for a writer of such prodigious output.

Of all of the outrageous misrepresentations at Wikipedia regarding Ed and Noam’s writings, one of the most egregious was the complete omission of their primary framework of analysis that they established in their first collaboration, which makes their subsequent work intelligible, on how constructive, benign, and nefarious bloodbaths were handled in the American media. To my knowledge, it did not exist at Wikipedia until I added it. Ed and Noam continued to add examples to that framework over the subsequent 40+ years, as the USA’s imperial machine rolled onward. It would be like labeling Einstein a crank in an attack that never mentioned relativity. Noam has been compared to Einstein plenty, and for good reason, so the treatment at Wikipedia really is a close cousin to dismissing Einstein as a crank without ever mentioning relativity. The worst offender appears to be Philip Cross, whom I deal with below.

Also, Noam’s writings on the propaganda model’s first-, second-, and third-order predictions were completely absent at Wikipedia, and the model’s predictions make the attacks on Ed and Noam’s Cambodian writings understandable, as well as the attacks on Ed’s writings on Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I added a section to the propaganda model article on its predictions. It is obvious why that highly relevant information was not published at Wikipedia: so that the disinformation attacks on their work would be more believable to casual readers. To knowledgeable readers, the Wikipedia article on Ed was libelous until now. Ed did not have the “stomach” to wade into the mire at Wikipedia, but he was emphatic that I was under no obligation to fix his Wikipedia bio (Pure Ed, once again), and he noted that he never suffered any personal repercussions from it.

Until now, I only worked on the CRV article, and I kind of accidentally made a change to The Political Economy of Human Rights article, which Freeknowledge immediately erased. I am not going to be quiet about future attempts to erase my work on Ed by people who create or protect misleading and even libelous versions of the facts. During the week before I published my version, some editors were trying to make Ed’s bio more faithful to the facts, and for that, they have my appreciation.

In brief, what Ed’s assailants nearly invariably did was turn his work on its head. Ed’s emphasis was always about how the media dealt with the facts. Ed approached the issue as a scientist, which was to take an issue and look at the available range of evidence, what its quality was, and then show how the media dealt with it. As demonstrated throughout his media analysis career, when the subject was an American crime, it often never received any treatment in the media, even when adjudicated in a court of law, even when the USA was complicit in genocide. But if it was a crime committed by a target of the American state, whether the crime was real or imagined, then any rumor would do (how about all that WMD that Iraq had, which Judith Miller breathlessly reported on in the run-up to the invasion?), and the more lurid, the better. Exposing the conceit that the American media was fair and impartial was the central thrust of Ed’s work, but you would never know it if all you saw were the attacks on his work, which was the majority of his bio until Ed asked me to work on it. Ed’s assailants turned it around and made it as if Ed was trying to discover the objective truth about the events, instead of analyzing the media’s performance regarding those events. That is a great misrepresentation of Ed’s work, and his assailants know it, unless they are insane or idiots. Ed and Noam always stood on the highest ethical ground, and their assailants often stood near the lowest.

Every time in Ed’s bio, and related articles, when an editor would state that Ed would make an assertion about Indochina, Rwanda, or Yugoslavia, and then the editor would present countervailing evidence (I looked at many versions that existed over the years, and there was more of that presented than there exists in the articles today), as if to show how Ed got it wrong, the editor entirely missed the point of Ed’s work, and such editors likely intentionally missed the point. Ed’s point was not so much about establishing the objective truth of the events, but about how the American media handled the evidence, and when he wrote about foreign nations, especially those that the USA intervened in, the focus was always on how the American media and indoctrination systems operated. It was not about who the good guys and bad guys were in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, but how our imperial system operates. The focus was on us, not them, similar to Jesus’s admonition to attend to the logs in our eyes before we seek the splinters in our neighbors’. How hard is that to understand? In the case of nefarious bloodbaths (and benign), it seems completely beyond the comprehension of his assailants, when they were not simply being dishonest. Try to find one of Ed’s assailants on Cambodia and Rwanda who deals in the slightest with the genocides in Indonesia, East Timor, and the Congo (constructive and benign), and particularly how the American media covered each event, and contrasts them with the media’s treatment of Cambodia and Rwanda (nefarious). That was virtually the entire point of Ed’s work. As an American, Ed exposed the crimes that his nation committed, not some other nation’s, and it was not only because of his high ethics, but also so that he could maybe help change his nation’s behavior. And Ed’s big heart always went out to those ground under the boot of anybody. Ed and Noam are among the greatest scholars of conscience that my great nation has yet produced.

I noted the argument on this talk page that criticisms of somebody’s work should go in the body of the article and not be presented separately. I don’t have a big problem with that, as long as what the authors wrote is fairly presented in front of the criticisms, and when the authors responded to the criticisms, they should have the last word. That has obviously not been the case with Ed’s work so far. Also, the attacks on Noam and Ed’s writings on Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda conform to the propaganda model’s third-order prediction of how the exposure of the facts on “nefarious bloodbaths” would be received by the Establishment, and what was on Wikipedia when Ed asked for my help was a textbook example of the phenomenon, so attempts to erase Noam and Ed’s writings on the propaganda model’s predictions of how their writings on Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda would be received are not going to last at Wikipedia, if I can help it. It would be like erasing the article on relativity in preparation for an attack on Einstein.

I have presented what were either the first, chief, or most “notable” criticisms of Ed’s and Noam’s works. What I saw on the criticisms before I got involved were marginal critics who often lied outright about Ed’s and Noam’s work. If people want to reinstate them (some were moved to the propaganda model article, which also has its “critics” section), they should go at the end, if they are there at all. It amazes me that this statement - “The Srebrenica Research Group was formed ‘to propagate the view that the Srebrenica massacre never happened’” - is produced in Ed’s bio. That is clearly libelous, as anybody with any familiarity with Ed’s work knows. The purpose of the Srebrenica Research Group (and Ed’s work) was showing how the slaughter of less than a thousand POWs became “genocide” in Western propaganda. Maybe Hoare believes what he wrote, incredibly, (his “evidence” of Noam’s “genocide denial” is the Emma Brockes interview, of all things, and Hoare’s writings are far from being sober scholarship, but more like shrill rantings), but that is no excuse for placing criminally negligent tabloid fodder in Ed’s bio, and it has been there for several years. Maybe it can be part of Ed’s bio, as an example of libel against him. Sophal Ear also libeled Noam and Ed, finding “hidden” meaning in their work that was not there, as Ear played the false dichotomy game. That a self-professed mind-reader like Ear is taken seriously is amazing. I gave Ear a little “credit” on the section on the campaign to portray Noam as a Khmer Rouge supporter and genocide denier, which might be the biggest of the Big Lies told about him, and Ed got smeared, too. But Steven Lukes’s attack on Chomsky is far more “notable” than Hoare’s and Ear’s libelous writings (and Lukes’s is the first major one), and it was the chief criticism that I used.

I did not delete much of Ed’s article. I removed some of the more libelous disinformation, and moved other parts to more appropriate places, such as the criticism section of the propaganda model, and the section on attacks on After the Cataclysm. I moved the Hoan discussion to the After the Cataclysm section of The Political Economy of Human Rights. I already had a Gelinas discussion in my bio draft, which is more of the same. If you feel that I unfairly deleted your contribution, sorry about that, and please find an appropriate place to restore it. It is easy to do. I tried to be as fair as I could.

In my opinion, the discussion of Noam and Ed’s “Distortions at Fourth Hand” was overblown in Ed’s bio, but I kept it and even expanded on it, to treat it fairly. “Distortions at Fourth Hand” is usually only significant to people trying to get some “genocide denial” mileage. I suggest that a more appropriate emphasis is how I treated it. It is a short article that preceded a tome, after their original work was censored. The tome, which has now been republished multiple times, is far more notable than the Nation article. The original coverage of “Distortions at Fourth Hand” in Ed’s bio was in the “genocide denier” vein, and Mekong.Net is far from a credible source (my work is likely more “notable,” and you don’t see it cited anywhere at Wikipedia, and I am OK with that), in which the author literally calls Noam and Ed “evil” scholars, does not discuss American responsibility for what happened in Cambodia (and the author is American), and takes Noam and Ed to task for not reporting information that appeared after they published their work, as Ear also did. Those attacks do not need to be cited in Ed’s bio, unless they are held up as examples of disinformation. The New York Times, Washington Post, and the like are plenty without dredging up obscure and libelous writings, even though Noam and Ed have been shut out from the mainstream media from the beginning, and Noam has been the world’s most prominent intellectual for the past 50 years. To my knowledge, the movie Manufacturing Consent, which was the most popular documentary in Canadian history to its time, has never played on an American mainstream TV station while it played on national TV in many other nations, in another stark confirmation of Noam and Ed’s work. I saw it at Ohio State University when it came out, and began corresponding with Noam later that year. In the USA, it only played at college campuses and maybe the occasional art house, to my knowledge, which Noam seems to have confirmed.

I moved Gitlin’s heroic attacks on a dead man to the criticism of the propaganda model section. Gitlin is a member of Ed’s Cruise Missile Left.

Battling with Wikipedia’s “editors” is no fun, but I’ll do it for Ed. With Ed’s death, there is nobody else in my life whom I would do it for (if Dennis had a Wikipedia bio, I would). My effort here is not only about doing justice to Ed’s life and work, but about helping to make Wikipedia a credible source of information, not a disinformation outlet that confirms everything that Ed and Noam wrote about the media. The potential of Wikipedia is great, but it has been subjected to many professional disinformation campaigns, and Cross’s work is likely part of one.

I already have a lengthier biography of Ed on my site – about twice as long as the Wikipedia bio, which Wikipedia’s “editors” cannot get at, and I hope that I don’t have to write another essay on how scandalously Wikipedia’s editors have acted. At least now, Ed’s bio won’t be rated “stub class” anymore at Wikipedia.  :) As Wikipedia is ideally a democratic medium, I fully expect many changes, but Ed’s bio is now no longer a stub and others need to help shoulder this load against the propagandists. I am only one man and am moving on to other projects. I will do my best to ensure that outright disinformation does not last long on Ed’s bio again. Controversy is fine; Ed never shrank from it, but let’s do it fairly.

I simultaneously updated several other articles, to align them with Ed’s revised bio, such as the propaganda model, manufacturing consent, and The Political Economy of Human Rights articles. I also added a Wikiquote page.

Best,

Wade Frazier

Frankly, Wade, as the editor who is number 5 in number of edits for this article, I think this article goes too easy on Herman. It's a bit gentle in pointing out when and where his opinions were mistaken. I happen to admire Noam Chomsky for his stand on many things, but I believe there are many more examples from reliable sources that could be cited to note his and Herman's ideologically-based bias on subjects such as Cambodia and Srebrenica. Smallchief (talk)
I recall, for example, that Chomsky dismissed stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia as tales told by refugees. Later, with the shoe on the other foot, he cited tales told by refugees as proof of genocide in Timor.Smallchief (talk) 22:21, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Smallchief, do you think that I did not expect criticisms to be added? A bunch of editors would be happy to cite more Ear, Caplan, and Hoare. That is what others can add. Ed's actual views were being misrepresented (it kind of made Ed sick), but it is a little better than it was last year. It was more about getting Ed's actual views on his bio, not the libel that is there today. I am about to post suggestions on how to do justice to Ed's work, now that my effort was completely erased. - Wade — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wadefrazier (talk • contribs) 22:18, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

The Nation Article which Chomsky and Herman wrote, "Distortions at Fourth Hand," is pretty damning for them. They are wrong on about everything they say and dismiss any evidence contrary of their views. I assume you're familiar with the article.Smallchief (talk) 22:36, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
@Smallchief: The point of the article is not to go "easy" or "hard" on Herman. It's to provide a good faith, cited, description of his academic contributions and then to discuss the controversy in a separate section. Right now the article is a mismash of misattributed quotes and editorials in place of secondary interpretations of Herman's work. A good template to start with would be the article on Slavoj Žižek which does a fair job of describing Žižek's work and then going into depth on his various controversies. In fairness to @Wadefrazier --despite the POV and citation problems-- his edits were much closer to the standard wikipedia format than the current article. Prop9 (talk) 22:57, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

That article was about the media's performance on, not the objective truth of, what was happening in postwar Indochina, which was not well known in 1977. Look at the article's title. Signing off now. - Wade — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wadefrazier (talk • contribs) 22:46, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Philip Cross’s edits

For such a towering scholar whose writings embarrassed and enraged the imperial elite, it was no big surprise to find that the leading editor of Ed’s articles so far has been the “legendary” Philip Cross (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I consider it unlikely that Cross is an individual, as other writers also suspect. We’ll see what the coming lawsuit might unearth. PropOrNot was unmasked, and we’ll see how it goes with Cross. These are grim days, when people can do their Orwellian/McCarthyite work anonymously, and even get it promoted by The Washington Post, as Ed knew well.

Cross is responsible for the disinformation version in Ed’s bio of the censorship of Noam and Ed’s first book. This will be one example of many that I could make about the edits that Cross and others have made relating to Ed at Wikipedia.

The corporate suppression of Ed and Noam’s first collaboration was one of the most outrageous instances of censorship in the late 20th century, and of all of the amazing facts of its censorship, two stand out above all others:


  • The Warner Communications conglomerate decided to put one of its own publishing companies out of business rather than let Noam and Ed’s book be sold to the American public;
  • Of the 20,000 copies printed by Warner’s subsidiary, 19,500 were destroyed.


Those are the two unassailable facts of that spectacular event. The best public source of the facts regarding the event that I know of comes from Noam and Ed, in their The Washington Connection, as they described what happened to their previous book. The next best existing source is in Ben Bagdikian’s The Media Monopoly.

Noam and Ed devoted four pages to the publishing history of Counter-Revolutionary Violence Counter-Revolutionary Violence (“CRV”). Bagdikian spent a little over two pages on it. Before Michael Moore became a household word, he also had a brief description of the event, and a bio of Noam, Barsky’s Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, has a couple of pages on the event, using Noam and Bagdikian as sources. Barsky wrote:

[…] The parent company actually put the publisher out of business. […] Why did Warner feel that in order to suppress a single book (a book, moreover, by two established intellectuals employed by leading American universities) it was worth it to cripple one of its own subsidiaries?

The most complete account on the Internet today might be mine. The source that Cross used, from Jim Neilson’s book, had about a paragraph. You can see it for yourself, here, where it says:

This understanding of the ideological limits of mainstream publishing firms is not far-fetched conspiracy theory. There have been instances in which books were refused publication for strictly ideological reasons. Such was the case with Counter-Revolutionary Violence, a critique of U.S. foreign policy by Herman and Chomsky that was to be published in 1973 by Warner Modular, Inc., a subsidiary of Warner Communications. According to Claude McCaleb, after Warner Publishing president William Sarnoff read an advance copy, he "immediately launched into a violent verbal attack . . . saying, among other things, that [Counter-Revolutionary Violence] was a pack of lies, a scurrilous attack on respected Americans, undocumented, a publication unworthy of a serious publisher. . . . He then announced that he had ordered the printer not to release a single copy . . . and that the . . . [book] would not be published" (qtd. in Bagdikian 33-34). Sarnoff had ads for this book cancelled and the Warner catalog listing the Herman/Chomsky book and the entire 10,000 copy press run destroyed. Christopher Hitchens narrates the fate of Counter-Revolutionary Violence: "The twenty thousand copies might have been pulped if it were not for a legally binding contract. Instead they were sold to an obscure outfit named MSS Information Corporation, whereupon Warner . . . washed its hands of the entire deal and of all responsibility for advertising, promotion, and distribution.

While it is certainly not a hostile account, it is quite skimpy and used Bagdikian as its primary source. Bagdikian would have been a better source. Neilson’s account also failed to deal with the two spectacular facts very well. It was not 10,000 copies that were destroyed out of the 20,000 printed, but 19,500 of them, and Neilson’s account failed to even mention that Warner Modular, the original publishing company, was shut down in an effort to ensure that Noam and Ed’s book never saw the light of day. But, at least, Neilson’s version mentioned that books were destroyed (not burned, Inquisition and Nazi-style, but “pulped”). To be fair to Neilson, he would have certainly been angry with how his paragraph was used in Ed’s bio.

How did part of Neilson’s account get into Ed’s bio? By Cross, here. This is what Cross wrote:

According to Jim Neilson’s book Warring Fictions: Cultural Politics and the Vietnam War Narrative, publication of the first collaboration between Chomsky and Herman Counter-Revolutionary Violence (1973) was stopped by an executive of its intended publisher who thought its discussion of American foreign policy was "a pack of lies, a scurrilous attack on respected Americans".

Cross placed it right after a discussion of Ed and Noam’s work on Vietnam. Reading what Cross wrote about what William Sarnoff said, about it being a “pack of lies,” made it sound like some kind of righteous judgment, not part of a notorious diatribe of the kind that is rarely heard in the halls of corporate America. I have never seen anything like it, and I have been in many boardroom meetings. Noam and Ed’s account of the censorship is pretty muted. They could have really let fly, but didn’t. Instead, the spectacular account is Bagdikian’s, which quotes the affidavit sworn by Claude McCaleb, the head of Warner Modular. Sarnoff ordered the Warner Modular catalog that listed CRV destroyed, and a new one printed that omitted CRV. When the stunned McCaleb replied that such an outrageous move would “shatter the staff and shock the academic world,” Sarnoff replied that:

[…] he didn’t give a damn what I, my staff, the authors, or the academic community thought, and ended by saying that we should destroy the entire inventory of CRV.

Wow. So, what did Cross do? He found a skimpy account (while avoiding the best ones), took an outrageous quote out of context, never mentioned that Warner Communications wiped out one of its own publishing companied to prevent CRV’s distribution, and in a later addition, Cross escalated his deception when he added: “Because of a binding contract, copies were passed to another publisher rather than destroyed.” The whole truth is something different. The company that Warner passed the copies to was MSS Information Corporation, which was not a commercial publisher and had no distribution facilities, it did not even list CRV in its inventory for a long time, and only 500 copies of the 20,000 printed survived that charade, which was partly done to avoid legal action. Cross’s version makes it seem like a responsible, even heroic, executive halted the publication of a libelous work, but was constrained by the contract, so the solution was to pass the “pack of lies” to another company, to satisfy its legal obligation and make the best of its difficult position. That is an impressive example of a spin-doctor at work.

So, with Cross’s help, Noam and Ed’s first collaboration was effectively censored twice: the first time, and the account of the censorship was effectively censored at Ed’s bio at Wikipedia. Even at Noam’s Wikipedia bio, it is pretty checkered. Sophal Ear and Mekong.net are far from credible sources, and both have smeared Noam and Ed.

Cross is artful and lawyerly in “his” edits, quotes of obviously libelous statements and defending their “reputability,” as he did when quoting Sophal Ear’s disinformation, and the like. When somebody removed that highly misleading passage by Cross on CRV’s fate, FreeKnowledge reinstated it!

People who had only read Cross’s highly slanted version of Neilson’s skimpy account on Ed’s bio until now would have had no inkling that not only were 97.5% of the books destroyed, but Warner shut down its own company to prevent Noam and Ed’s book from being read, in one of the most amazing cases of censorship in the late 20th century. Cross has proven “himself” shameless over the years, so I don’t expect “him” to begin behaving “himself.” What Cross did to Ed’s Wikipedia bio is arguably libelous. What does it take to get “him” banned from editing anything related to Ed? How great do Cross’s editorial crimes need to get?

Best,

Wade

@Wadefrazier: One of my particular problems with the article is that the Neilson quote is actually a direct lift from [1] and ignores the point about censorship that McCaleb was trying to make in his affidavit. Prop9 (talk) 23:31, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
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