Not Fit To Print

Recently, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson penned a brief essay outlining the latest UN resolution (essentially authored by the US) which denies Iran the means (thus the right) of defending itself from the depredations of aggressor nations, in this instance the US, UK, and Israel—not only the resolution’s chief sponsors but, paradoxically, the only nations that have launched attacks and maintain occupations in the Mid-East region. Not coincidentally, these three nations also threaten Iran with destruction.

What makes the Herman/Peterson essay remarkable, however, are not necessarily its contents which merely retraces some of the steps leading to the present “crisis”, but the peculiar reactions to it among newspaper editors across the nation. You see Herman and Peterson can’t seem to get it published anywhere in the mainstream.

Although they have submitted this piece to editors at all of the mainline newspapers for space on their op-ed pages, none to date have deemed it worthy of further dissemination. This circumstance is most curious given the fact that Herman and Peterson’s voices were among the most prescient detractors during the lead-up to the criminal assault on Iraq. This during a period, I remind you, when the corporate mainstream media served as a bullhorn for the Team Bush fabrications of the Iraqi “threat” to the US—indeed the world. One would think given the mainstream media’s appalling performance four years ago that it would leap at the opportunity to present the warnings of those who got it right back then, but such is not to be for it seems that some things are just not fit to print.