Reply to Stephen Zunes

Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Stephen Zunes does make a credible case that he has directed the bulk of his work to the critical analysis of U.S. and U.S. client-state abuses and that it is unfair to accuse him of focusing only on governments that are U.S. targets.[1]  We had done this in passing when we quoted an independent blogger who named Zunes as a member of a "clique" (our word) that takes an interest in the "democratic" potential of countries only when the "U.S. wants to bring down a government by military force, attempting to refocus any First World opposition away from opposing imperialism and toward 'bringing down dictators by nonviolent means'."[2]  As the inclusion of Zunes' name in the original version of our text was wholly tangential to the larger case that we made there as well as in

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Edward Samuel Herman (April 7, 1925 – November 11, 2017) .  He wrote extensively on economics, political economy, foreign policy, and media analysis.  Among his books are The Political Economy of Human Rights (2 vols, with Noam Chomsky, South End Press, 1979); Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981);  The "Terrorism" Industry (with Gerry O'Sullivan, Pantheon, 1990);  The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader (Peter Lang, 1999); and Manufacturing Consent (with Noam Chomsky, Pantheon, 1988 and 2002).  In addition to his regular "Fog Watch" column in Z Magazine, he edited a web site, inkywatch.org, that monitors the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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