Reviews for The real terror network

The average rating for The real terror network based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-03 00:00:00 James Moore "If 'terrorism' means 'intimidation by violence or the threat of violence,' and if we allow the definition to include violence by states and agents of states, then it is these, not isolated individuals or small groups, that are the important terrorists in the world. If terrorist violence is measured by the extent of politically motivated torture and murder, it was shown... that it is in the U.S.-sponsored and protected 'authoritarian' states--the real terror network--that these forms of violence have reached a high crescendo in recent decades. In Central America alone, some 60-100 civilians were being murdered by state terrorists per day in 1981, and torture was employed on a regular basis and as a 'mode of governance' in more than a dozen U.S. client states in Latin America during the 1970s. As a torturer, murderer and intimidator of large numbers, Augusto Pinochet and his Chilean associates by themselves outclass the aggregate of all the members of Claire Sterling's terror network. The CIA's estimate of all deaths attributable to 'international terrorists' from 1968-1980 is under 4,000, whereas Pinochet and company exceeded this total by a substantial margin in their first year in power." "In sum, anticommunism, the 'terrorist' threat, and militarism are being used to cover over savagely inhumane policies at home and even more scandalous policies abroad." "Communism is an enormously serviceable tool for achieving morally dubious goals under a morally acceptable cover." "I offer a rule applicable within the west: for a given state crime, criminality is inversely related to GNP, firepower, and strength of western affiliation." "The numbers imprisoned for political reasons in the NSSs [National Security States] of Latin America, if we include all who are picked up and taken to police stations for 'questioning,' probably greatly exceeded a million for the period of 1960-1980. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, 28,000 were picked up for questioning as possible subversives in the year 1977 alone. Over 100,000 were detained for political reasons in Chile during the post-coup period of 1973-1976. Of these, a large fraction were killed (over 20,000), and a still larger fraction were subjected to torture. Given the high rates of torture of political prisoners in the larger states like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the numbers of tortured in the NSSs, 1960-1980, run into the hundreds of thousands."

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-19 00:00:00 Randolf Timlick Ed Herman is a Wharton professor and collaborator of Noam Chomsky, and wrote this book was in the early 80's in response to another book written at the time called "The Terror Network." This book reviews the state-sponsored terrorism that has plagued Latin America throughout the mid-20th century, and what roles the US and media have played in perpetuating them. I was almost entirely unfamiliar with the recent histories of Latin America (beyond some understanding of the rise of Pinochet in Chile), and wish I had more context, but what I read was astonishing and awful. This region has been plagued by state sponsored torture, death squads, abductions, and all sorts of suppression. These crimes were carried out by the governments of 8 Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Uruguay), with degrees of support from the US varying from financial support of the suppressor to direct invasion. The "why" here tends to follow a similar theory across all cases: an alignment of interest between large corporate interests that want cheap labor and market protection, US executive administrations that want to stamp down socialism and promote US companies overseas, Latin American leaders who want a docile populace, and US media that is subservient to corporate sponsors. The book goes into great detail on the "what" listing unbelievable crimes perpetrated across all of these countries, with extensive documentation in the footnotes. But the "who" seems limited to the groups in Latin America, and is short on details regarding the other actors. Namely, who are these corporate interests that are forcing so much of this violence? The violence is happening, and the documentation seems pretty clear that the US has been heavily involved, but I don't really understand what specific parties were pushing for this.