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October 10, 2012 | Right Web
In late September 2001, less than 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)-a group of prominent neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, and members of the religious right who advocated a host of U.S.-led regime changes in the Middle East-drafted a letter to President George W. Bush, commending his promise to "go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world" and offering a number of recommendations for the remainder of the president's term.[1] The steps outlined in the letter were prescient in predicting Bush's foreign policy priorities (and to a lesser extent, the priorities of his successor, Barack Obama).[2]
In addition to their advocacy positions on Iraq (invade immediately), Israel (support unconditionally), and military spending (abide "no hesitation in requesting whatever funds for defense are needed"), the signatories urged a tougher stance on Hezbollah, as well as its state sponsors in Damascus and Tehran.
In the letter, they argued that "any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah," and urged the administration to "demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism."
Today, as Syria remains mired in a seemingly limitless spiral of violence, the question arises-what has become of this attack-Syria coalition and what, if anything, has changed in its view of U.S. intervention?
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December 12, 2013 | Foreign Policy In Focus
Since World War II, the United States hasn't let a day go by without a mortal enemy.
In a 1985 article in Political Psychology, which I recently found while browsing JSTOR, John Kennan was quoted by author John E. Mack.* Kennan, the political scientist and diplomat whose ideas informed the U.S. policy of "containing" the Soviet Union wrote (in "Letter to an American," the New Yorker, September 24, 1984):
The habit of spending from two to three hundred billions of dollars annually on preparations for an imagined war with Russia ― a habit reaching deeply into the lives and interests of millions of our citizens both in and out of the armed services, including industrial workers, labor-union officials, politicians, legislators, and middlemen: This habit has risen to the status of a vast addiction of American society, an addiction whose overcoming would encounter the most intense resistance and take years to accomplish even if the Soviet Union had in the meantime miraculously disappeared from the earth.
In other words, he foresaw how unlikely it was that the United States, however flush with victory over the Soviet Union (or more accurately, it didn't col) would issue itself a "peace dividend," improving the economy by spending less on defense. While U.S. military spending would decrease during the decline of the Soviet Union, as we all know it went through the roof after 9/11. As with the Soviet Union after World War, the rise of Islamic terrorism arrived just in time to infuse the military-industrial complex ― not to mention the American psyche ― with the adrenaline boost in fear they both thrive on.
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November 18, 2013 | RT Op-Edge
Make no mistake: the 'American Dream' was mortally wounded alongside John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
The President's unpunished murder was an 'open season' declaration on the elected leadership in the West. 'Robbed' of their 1962 Cuban nuclear war, the assassins were letting the whole world know who was 'The Daddy'.
Fifty years on we seem to be losing the same war for democratic control of our governments. Bankster robber barons and their Military Industrial Complex sidekicks are crawling all over the British cabinet. US Secretary of State John Kerry is still at it too. Despite being nominally a Democrat like JFK, he spends every waking hour in search of enemies, trying, by fair means and foul, to provoke war with Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
Perhaps he has a death wish? Perhaps it is Kerry's lying-in-a-coffin initiation into Yale University's Brotherhood of Death, the Skull and Bones Society, that blinds him to the likelihood his avarice will spark a global nuclear exchange with Russia? Just like the 1962 provocateurs, cut from the same cloth he doesn't give a damn.
US justice gets its boots on
The man who did the forensics and discovered most of the buried bodies in a trial that came within a whisker of nailing the JFK conspirators was former US Army officer and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. His investigation and 1988 book 'On the Trail of the Assassins' formed the rough draft for Oliver Stone's 1991 definitive film JFK.
Any treacherous TV station not showing JFK on the 50th anniversary should, I advise, be forever deleted from your channel list. It's unlikely any of the NATO zone TV documentaries rolling out over the 50th anniversary will come half as close to telling you what really happened as the Stone movie.
Instead we're being fed a propaganda diet of rancid red herrings, laced with insulting false trails while the graphic Zapruder film and a distraught Jackie Kennedy, as well as Jack Ruby shooting patsy-suspect Lee Harvey-Oswald in the stomach, sow the seeds of fear where they hurt.
Just as with more recent unexplained deaths of UK Secret Service men David Kelly in 2003 and Gareth Williams in 2010 the message of JFK's gruesome assassination is designed to fundamentally undermine the social fabric. The horror slips under the radar of consciousness to stamp into millions of psyches what, with impunity, the secret government can do.
For a refreshing taste of 'Garrison in the raw', listener-supported Oakland, California, radio outfit Guns and Butter's two-hour 1988 show 'The Assassination of JFK: The Garrison Interview' gets to the heart of the story. We hear, in Bonnie Faulkner's and Andrew Phillips's production, the voice of history's unfortunate self-confessed patsy Lee Harvey Oswald as well as Oliver Stone.
Radio Station KPFA co-producer David Mendelsohn interviews Garrison nearly 20 years after the trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw, by which time further witnesses had crawled out of the woodwork, bringing with them further pieces of the jigsaw.
Garrison's disarming frankness and black humor make Guns and Butter's 25th anniversary production the benchmark documentary against which the entire 50th anniversary clutch can be judged. Evidence of the mainstream media's crippling influence that this classic documentary has still never been broadcast on national radio in the US or UK.
The 'we'll-never-know' brigade
Mainstream media flunkies are paid well to tell us that because Oswald was shot we will never know what organization or individuals were behind Kennedy's assassination. I beg to differ. The CIA - set up by Allen Dulles, who did the dirty 1945 deals with the Nazis, and who JFK fired - killed the president.
Specifically-named individuals winkled out by Garrison are Cuban and New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello and two more with far right CIA links: Civil Air Patrol pilot David Ferrie and private investigator Guy Banister.
The CIA plot to upend US democracy couldn't have worked though without the support of the man who would replace Kennedy. After his inauguration, new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately re-fired up the Vietnam & Cold War policies JFK had cooled.
Johnson gained financially too through his 'Suite 8F Group'. This has today grown to become the Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) Inc., one of the largest military contractors on the planet with $8 billion annual revenue.
The CIA's three central motives are pretty clear: Kennedy successfully stopped a nuclear war with the Soviet Union in 1962 that Strategic Air Command's General Curtis LeMay intended to win "...at any point the Soviet Union could have been obliterated without more than expectable losses on our side."
Kennedy blocked air support and other US military aid for the 1961 Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion attempt, leaving the hawks with egg on their faces. He was closing down one of the CIA's biggest slush fund operations, the Vietnam War. Cash was coming in aplenty from heroin trafficking in the Far East.
Echoes from the dawn of time?
Perhaps there was something archetypal and timeless about Kennedy's death. Former US Naval officer-turned-radio host William Cooper put it like this in 1996: "There was even a time in history when the king was a sacrificial king. Just like John F. Kennedy was in the Temple of the Sun known as Dealey Plaza."
Though this sounds far-fetched, Cooper is one of the few individuals who, on his 'Hour of the Time' short wave radio show in June 2001, publicly predicted a spectacular attack on America to be blamed on Osama Bin Laden. Five months later, after 9/11, Cooper was shot dead by the FBI, who had been trying to entrap him by posing as hoodlums outside his Arizona home.
The secret government
So who are this secret government that uses blackmail, character assassination and murder to shoot the messengers and direct those we elect to high office? They are the kind of furious cash unlimited networkers of the Council on Foreign Relations, Sun Valley, Davos, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg groups.
Welded into the Military Industrial Complex these lobbyists laugh in the face of cash-starved politicians as they play the power game of nations. They extend territory abroad while their political gofers roll out a domestic police state at home. Bankrolling them are the dynasties of the Rockefellers in the US and the Rothschilds across Europe.
What was US colonial independence really all about? Yes, money. The settlers quite rightly wanted to print their own in 1775 and England wasn't having it. As the documentary 'The Secret of Oz' explains, private US bankers went on to take that power off the American people in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 The United States is suffering under the exact same power now that they fought Britain to be free of.
William Cooper also said "Any general that ventures upon a battlefield without understanding the enemy is doomed to defeat." The Western political establishment needs a crash course right now in locking up banking fraudsters and how the state Treasury can take back control of money.
What would those who fought and died on the Allied side in World War II say if they could see how we and our leaders are letting Europe and America slip into the hands of the banksters?
Despite all the JFK TV propaganda though it is the Jim Garrisons, Bonnie Faulkners, David Mendelsohn's and Oliver Stones that will carry the day. Trust is waning in the West's mainstream media, particularly amongst the youngsters, and those old JFK lies are well past their sell by date.
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Aug 21, 2013 | PressTV
On occasion of the publication of his latest book, "JFK: Staatsstreich in Amerika" ("JFK: Coup d'état in America"), German author Mathias Broeckers has talked to The Global Research elaborating on his research into the crime.
"JFK had made definitive steps to end the Cold War. He had denied the involvement of the army in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he had inherited from his predecessor, he had solved the missile crisis in Cuba through direct and secret contact with the Soviet-leader Khrushchev, he had ensured a nuclear test-stop with the Soviets, and he had ordered the withdrawal from Vietnam. All this against the will of the military, the CIA, and even against many members of his own administration," Broeckers said.
Broeckers pointed out that many groups including the communists in Russia, China, Cuba, the Israelis because of "JFK's dismissal of nukes in Israel," and the Federal Reserve because of his idea for a new US dollar backed by silver, had motives to kill the president but "only the CIA and the military - and the FBI and the Johnson administration for the cover-up" had the means to carry out such an operation.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, several people who were stopped by the police showed "genuine looking Secret Service IDs," but there were no real Secret Service men placed on the "grassy knoll" and the Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas where Kennedy was assassinated, the German journalist said.
"These IDs were fakes but the FBI and the Warren Commission didn't investigate this at all. Only in the 80s it came out who was responsible for the printing of Secret Service IDs and passes at that time: it was the CIAs Technical Division, headed by Sydney Gottlieb of 'MK Ultra' fame."
The fact that this "deception" was not investigated for so many years, immediately brings the FBI into a "top-position of suspects", Broeckers noted.
The German author further said that a crucial point regarding the cover-up of the assassination is the false autopsy report. "The ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) established beyond any doubt that the autopsy and X-rays, which are in the National Archives, were doctored."
The fake autopsy and X-rays were conducted at the Bethseda military hospital and under the supervision of Curtis LeMay, the Joint Air Force chief and one of Kennedy's "keenest enemies," Broeckers added.
The faked documents "which were presented to every investigator since then, are a main reason why the crazy magic bullet theory could hold for so long. Only the military, where these pics and X-rays were taken, was able to arrange these fakes and place them in the archives."
A strong motive for the CIA to want Kennedy out of the way, according to Broeckers, was that the former president sought to reform the spy agency.
"Since the CIA's 'father' Allen Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer and his brother John Foster ran the foreign policy, covert operations were a family business done by the Dulles Brothers and their clients on Wall Street. This is what JFK tried to finish and what marked him to death."
The Associated Press reports that researchers are demanding the CIA to declassify documents detailing what the government knew about Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, before the assassination.
Several hundred of the still-classified pages, according to AP, concern CIA operative "George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years."
Joannides left the CIA in 1979 and died in March 1990.
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November 14, 2013 | Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
These are major long term wars each lasting two to three times as long as World War II. Forbes reports that one million US soldiers have been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. RT reports that the cost of keeping each US soldier in Afghanistan has risen from $1.3 million per soldier to $2.1 million per soldier. Matthew J. Nasuti reports in the Kabul Press that it cost US taxpayers $50 million to kill one Taliban soldier. That means it cost $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban fighters. This is a war that can be won only at the cost of the total bankruptcy of the United States.
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is at least $6 trillion.
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Published: November 8, 2013 | NTY
Two United States admirals, including the Navy's chief intelligence officer, were stripped of their access to classified information on Friday after being implicated in a contracting scandal that federal prosecutors are investigating in San Diego.
The accusations against the two officers - Vice Adm. Ted Branch, the director of naval intelligence, and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, the director of intelligence operations - signal a significant escalation in the investigation and show its widening impact on the Navy.
Admirals Branch and Loveless have been accused of "inappropriate conduct" in connection with the scandal, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Navy's chief of information, said in a statement Friday night. Investigators had so far named only midlevel Navy officers accused of accepting visits from prostitutes and lavish trips - and in one instance $100,000 in cash - from Leonard Francis, a Malaysian contractor.
Navy officials said the allegations against Admirals Branch and Loveless involved personal misconduct in accepting gifts or services from Mr. Francis, the nature of which could have exposed them to blackmail. But, the officials said, there was no sign at this point that the admirals had done anything for Mr. Francis that might lead to bribery charges against them.
Mr. Francis, chief executive of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, has been charged with bribing Navy officials to shift port calls for warships to ports where he could charge exorbitant fees.
Neither Admiral Branch, whose appointment required Senate approval, nor Admiral Loveless has been charged with a crime, and there is no indication that classified information was leaked, Admiral Kirby said. Both men have been put on leave, he said, but will keep their security clearances.
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Jane on
September 1, 2013 Excellent!!,
Swanson's overarching argument is that the war industry became established in WWII, and indelibly entrenched in policy during the Cold War. Today, the military-industrial complex is the most powerful special interest group, influencing foreign policy, the economy, and social issues. It calls into question the constitutionality of current government .
Though he introduces the concept of the military-industrial complex in Chapter 1, Swanson refers back to his definition many times throughout the book. This adds to the book's clarity because there is an easy-to-follow theme throughout the book. Rarely do I feel, "okay... why is all this in the book?" (which, to me, seems so common in long historical narratives)
Swanson makes the connection between war and "big government." I thought this was one of the most fascinating political theories in the book. He ties together the economic, political, and social implications of the militarization era. He highlights the CIA, the American government's own "secret society," as well as criminal negligence and government self-regulation as problems in government policy.
The second half of the book transitions to the rise of "national security" as a prop for government action, and concludes with an investigation of Cold War repercussions that extend into the 21st century. I feel that Swanson expertly highlights the similarities between the Cold War period and modern Middle East conflicts. For example, the national security issue remains relevant today, in context of September 11th and the Patriot Act. Swanson even extends his argument to the constitution, illustrating how as national security's threat to personal liberty.
The conclusion also offers an intelligent summation of the author's arguments and analysis. Swanson speaks to the insane fantasy land the federal government lives in as it attempts to "control a dynamic and changing world." At the same time, the "big government" squeezes the individual person, through ever increasing taxes, calling for personal sacrifice through our always-mobilized army, and the pressure our country places on other independent nations to adopt the same military-industrial complex.
This book was an enlightening and educational experience which positively influenced my political opinion. I highly recommend it for those who are curious about post-war history.
Jacob G. Hornberger (Future of Freedom Foundation, Fairfax, VA USA) on September 6, 2013
An Awesome Book on the Warfare State,
Of all the books I've read on the national-security state and the warfare state, this book ranks among the best. It provides an excellent introduction to the major problem that is facing the American people: the warfare-state, national-security state apparatus that was grafted onto our constitutional order after World War II. Swanson carefully explains how this fundamentally changed our constitutional order and our way of life as Americans, for the worse.
Swanson shows how the national-security state has become a permanent bureaucratized part of the U.S. government. He cites President Eisenhower's warning to the American people about the dangers that the military-industrial complex pose to our democratic processes. And he details the ever-growing tensions that existed between Eisenhower's successor, John Kennedy, and the national-security state establishment. His perspectives on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis are among the best I've read.
While the book covers the period 1945-1963, in the final chapter Swanson shows the relevance of the war state to Americans today:
"Today the military-industrial complex is more powerful than ever and the war state has become a bloated fiscal nightmare intent to engage in seemingly endless and unwinnable wars until the end of time -- all on the basis of supposed threats that are even bigger exaggerations than the Soviet threat was ever portrayed to be during the Cold War. The problem is that if defense spending is not brought under control, eventually the size of the federal debt and the budget deficit will grow so large that the value of the US dollar will decline. It already has..."
"The promoters of the war state answer by claiming that it is all necessary for your own safety. But is it? In my view, our choice today is not one of safety or defense, because it really doesn't take much to defend the United States of America. Instead, our choice is between reducing military spending and creating a rational foreign policy or going bankrupt in order to maintain the power of the war state and its imperial policies that don't work and harm the national economy."
Best of all, this book, this book is oriented toward the educated layman, not the academic. As such, it is easily readable and easily understandable. It's about 400 pages long, and I read it in about three consecutive evenings.
Michael Swanson gets it. He sees what the embrace of the national-security state has done to our nation. Just like us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, he's not willing to accept the notion that the warfare-state apparatus is a necessary part of the U.S. government. He clearly understands, in fact, that the freedom and future well-being of the American people lies in its dismantling.
Buy this book! It is a shining light in the dark times in which we live. Better yet, buy multiple copies for your family and friends!
John Ellis (Gainesville, VA USA) on September 10, 2013
Clear Powerful Informative,
Hard to put down, Swanson's account, well referenced, of the enormous and persistent military buildup since WW2 boggles the mind. It shows how we have simply swallowed the propaganda and how even presidents have been forced to follow suit, given the enormous profits and far reaching influence the armaments industry has had on Congress and on public opinion. Swanson first points out Eisenhower's stark warnings and how despite them, the buildup never ceased. Fighters as the F-22 Raptor with no clear combat mission costing over 120 million a copy are very hard to explain on any other grounds than profits. Truly, if the US ran out of enemies, it would have to invent them. ... ... ...
We are undergoing shocking threats to liberty we are already seeing by this militarization, even of our police forces, that have resulted from a constant war footing, the establishment and constant encroachment by Homeland Security and the paranoia that accompanies it.
... ... .... Local jurisdictions freely admit they are forced to using their police departments as cash cows, ticketing passing motorists for the most inane of infractions, not for safety, but for revenue, as Federal and local sources of money dry up. Swanson notes how the ability to keep money seized in stops for drug trafficking has resulted in corruption, planted evidence and phony arrests to justify the ends and how the ill fated drug war has created more self-serving monstrous bureaucracies and private prison companies increasingly desperate to perpetuate their own existence. I was an Air Force Flight surgeon on nuke-armed B-52's during the Cold War and I saw much of coming this head on.
This huge nuclear fleet, continuously airborne, was to be a WW3 deterrent on the cheap, helping to avoid having to maintain a huge standing army with its enormous costs, but the armaments industry, as Swanson points out, could not tolerate such a state. Swanson's knowledge of history and his gift of writing elevates him to the level of George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) and Phillip Roth (Fahrenheit 451) in describing our devastating ruinous course, with a destiny of joining the historical wrecks of past democracies similarly destroyed by dystopian forces. We fail to read and heed this important, fully Pulitzer Prize quality work at our peril.
J. Quick (@ bookbitch.com) on September 2, 2013
A Must Read,
Don't let the title scare you away from this engaging narrative. (I have a very personal interest in this as a cousin gave up his Air Force career as the result of the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He said he couldn't sleep thinking about all the people about to die.) The author knows his material and manages to present it in a very entertaining manner. Swanson makes a persuasive case that control of our country has effectively been ceded to a small power elite of individuals in business and government who report to no one and who guide the nation no matter which political party is in power. To support his argument Swanson uses previously unavailable information about the Cold War from the perspective of the Soviets. Swanson's research is detailed and authoritative. One particular interesting aspect is Swanson's tracing the connection from the US initial efforts to install the Shah of Iran to our current problems in that region. Whether or not you agree with Swanson's conclusions this should be a must-read for anyone interested in post World War-II international affairs, which should be everyone since all our lives are affected daily by the results of these actions.
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Judy Schavrien on July 23, 2013The Downhill Slide of DemocracyRegarding the NSA scandal--what one might call the surveillance conspiracy--Jimmy Carter recently said in Der Spiegel (July 17, 2013) that "America has no functioning democracy at this moment." He has also praised Snowden's courage, hoping it would give the United States a salutary shakeup. When did the tipping point occur? When did democracy's downhill slide begin? According to Joseph McBride, playing journalistic and scholarly tour guide as he takes us Into the Nightmare, it began with the successful killing of JFK--and of Officer J.D. Tippit as well--on November 22, 1963, gaining momentum with a seemingly well-orchestrated coverup in the wake. Luckily, Professor McBride accomplishes an astonishing feat in offering his reinterpretation, one that profits from his three decades of diligent research on the topic and his interdisciplinary and encyclopedic ability to remember and arrange.
If you think Professor McBride is one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, be sure to read his chapter on the CIA's campaign, memos and all, to throw doubt on any who might come to question the Oswald-only version of the assassination, who might instead argue that there were a number of killers, e.g. Grassy Knoll marksmen as well. It is possible you will recognize, as you read the CIA memo, tag lines that hang out in your own or a friend's mind, the prefab objections to conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, Watergate, Iran/Contra, NSA may float to the surface of your mind and you may have to admit that conspiracies do happen. If they can happen from the governmental side, why not from the side of the assassins? Or were the two sides one and the same?
Some players include the CIA, the anti-Castro Cubans, big oil and the mafia: LBJ and even the elder Bush (Chapter 10) would have a fair amount to explain as well. The doubts regarding such players are by no means wildly raised, but very carefully, very systematically. "Paranoid" is one of the buzzwords the CIA had suggested for its campaign against conspiracy theorists: It is right there in the memo that McBride documents. But the McBride book gives not only evidence that confirms its theories but also that which disconfirms: good research.
I refer, in this case, to the evidence bearing on the Warren Commission report's "lone nut" version of the killings, with Oswald having been responsible for not only Kennedy's death and Governor Connally's injury--including using just one bullet that got them both, no less--but also for Officer Tippit's death en route to Oswald's own attempted escape. This book is, henceforth, a must-read for any with an ongoing interest in what remains an open case. That it does remain an open case is proven by the simple fact that the Warren Commission report, with Oswald as the "lone nut," has been later contradicted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, which finally concedes that two shooters must have been active.
McBride himself points out unique contributions as he goes along, the biggest one being his new and telling research on the J.D. Tippit death, research that begins to link Tippit with Ruby and the mafia, big oil, and the extreme right wing. It must be remembered as well, which McBride demonstrates, that, should LBJ have been involved in the JFK assassination, which is not proven, although there is documentation of his involvement in the coverup, he profited enormously from reversing JFK's intentions to gradually withdraw from Vietnam, since he owned substantial stock in Kellogg, Brown & Root, which had been absorbed in 1962 into Halliburton, both of which enjoyed a pile of non-competitive contracts for the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. With the death of JFK, LBJ also ducked a scandal about his own finances which would have burst upon the scene any minute. Oddly enough, then, solving the Tippit death accurately, rather than throwing that one on Oswald as well--who cried out when being led off "I'm just a patsy!"--is crucial.
Finally, McBride fashions this book of non-fiction, this history, as a Bildungsroman. The "Bildung" or education of an idealistic youth he tells in all its idiosyncracy: The author began as an ardent believer in Catholicism, America, and its free media, with two journalists for parents; he gradually lost that bloom of innocence, resisting along the way, and acquired the wound of experience; he tells the story so vividly that it becomes the American journey itself. Luckily, the wound does not prevent his own dogged progress, patriotic even or especially in its deeply skeptical approach. Blood, however, stains the pages. Without not only McBride's wakeup call but also the many other calls that are right now sounding, both about a political shadow government and even (cf. Catherine Austin Fitts) a financial shadow system as well, and without our actively heeding those calls, there will be, at home and abroad, more blood to come. Hannah Arendt has said (University of Chicago, lecture series, early `70's) that Americans at the founding wanted to be free from governing and concern with government rather than free to exert themselves in self-governing. This is a luxury we can no longer afford, perhaps could never afford. May it soon be said again, in a voice not of innocence but of experience, that America has a functioning democracy.
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Amazon.com
In 1963, and the idea that the President of the United States could be gunned down in broad daylight was almost unbelievable. In America men and women wept openly in the streets for their dead leader. But events soon began to unpick the original version of what happened. It turned out that the official report was little more than a crude government whitewash designed to hide the real truth. Even American Presidents admitted as much. President Nixon memorably confessed in private that the "Warren Report was the biggest hoax ever perpetuated" on the American public. It began to emerge that maybe Lee Harvey Oswald, the original "one nut gunman," may not have acted on his own; others were involved, too. That meant no "lone gunman," but a conspiracy. This book attempts to answer the big question: who really shot JFK? And, more important still, exactly why was he shot?
John Hughes-Wilson argues that the murder of John Kennedy was, like the murder of Julius Caesar 2,000 years before, nothing less than a bloody coup d'état by his political enemies, a conspiracy hell bent on removing a leader who was threatening the power and the money of the ruling establishment. Pointing the finger at Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the Mafia, John joins Jackie and Bobby Kennedy in their conclusion that the assassination of JFK was far more complex than a deranged attack by Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine.
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Scott Greer on September 17, 2013This book will open your eyes to the case like no other work beforeThere have been endless works on the assassination of JFK and who was behind it. From a gang of hobos to angry Cuban expats, the list of possible conspirators is numerous and all theories have been covered to some extent. What hasn't been covered before is the larger context that the assassination took place in and how it is still relevant to our current political climate, until now with Jerome Corsi's new book Who Really Killed Kennedy?
Corsi's essential argument is that the plot to kill Kennedy was hatched by military and financial elites who were displeased with Kennedy's unwillingness to go along with their plans for a New World Order. Presenting new and overlooked evidence, Dr. Corsi argues his case with thorough documentation and persuasive analyses that offers an enlightening perspective for the reader.
His argument that it was powerful elements within the government and their allies in the military-industrial complex and financial institutions is also a more plausible theory than others that have been suggested due to the fact that they would've had the ability to cover up the conspiracy and they directly benefitted from the death of JFK. They were able to increase America's involvement in Vietnam and create the kind of military that would be able to protect their interests across the world. It offers a theory for why America would get involved in such conflicts as Iraq and Syria when there seems to be no vested interest for our country to get involved.
Whether you believe his theory or not, this book is an engaging read and offers a new perspective on the assassination that shocked a nation and changed the course of history. I recommend this book as it looks to be the best account of the assassination that has been published so far.
Steve Glass on September 17, 2013
The America of JFK is dead.
This is the book to understand the machinations that set in position dominoes that would fall, helping bring about the "End of History" Fukuyama wrote about.
Call it a New World Order or the Anglo-American Order, Dr. Corsi makes a convincing case the assassination of JFK was the final nail in the coffin of the old republic and the birth of something else.
Stephen Courts by October 16, 2013
I was skeptical of Corsi due to his character assassination of John Kerry, when Dubya was fricking AWOL and a pretend pilot. Avoiding Viet Nam by circumventing the draft through the Air National Guard. However Corsi has written a very good book that has new information and provocative chapters, like the Grassy Knoll with Sniper/Author Craig Roberts. There are a number of errors with dates and names which is inexcusable coming from a full time writer. He mixes up Epstein for Fonzi and has JFK giving a speech in 1970 and has Clay Shaw almost breaking the case when he meant Jim Garrison. The book could have used a proof reader with a little experience.
I was not swayed by the KGB defector who claimed Khrushchev was seeking revenge for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not true. James Douglass has written a masterpiece in JFK & The Unspeakable, Why He Died & Why It Matters debunking this nonsense. This chapter Oswald, The KGB, And The Plots To Assassinate JFK IN Chicago And Tampa is accurate except for the Khrushchev part. Chicago and Tampa were real assassination attempts on President Kennedy. To my pleasant surprise Mr. Corsi gives full credit to one courageous Secret Service Agent who assisted in the Chicago attempt on November 2, 1963. That would of course be Abraham Bolden, who would suffer significantly for truth telling in 1964 after attempting to reach the "Johnson Commission" with information about the attempts on President Kennedy's life and the lax, at best, security surrounding him.
The chapter on the Roots Of The JFK Assassination - A Banana Republic, The CIA And The Mob is an excellent primer on the skullduggery of the CIA acting to protect the neo-colonial masters by Coup d'état's and assassinations. Very well written and researched, sowing the seeds of "how to" for future Coup's, including the execution of President Kennedy. Similarly the chapter on Cuba, Nixon & Watergate is full of excellent research. In all there are seven chapters and a conclusion and except for the former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa, the entire book is full of solid research. To his credit Corsi gives due recognition to the premier researchers such as Douglass, James DiEugenio, Mary Ferrell, Gaeton Fonzi and Russ Baker and others.
While he suspects George H.W. Bush (I do too), Nixon and of course LBJ and most importantly the Military and CIA (Dulles), he stops short of calling the execution "State Sponsored". In so many words he alludes to this, but Vincent Salandria called this as early as 1963-64 for what it was. It was and continues to be a State Sponsored Coup d'état directed at the highest level of the Military, "Intelligence" and Corporate leaders. I particularly liked the history (I have read it before) of the Dulles', George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush and their duplicitous and traitorous involvement in support of Hitler. The section on Reinhard Gehlen would be very fascinating if more people would READ and understand how Fascism was imported to the United States post World War 2. Most people are unfortunately like Allen Dulles said, not readers. This information would be an excellent avenue of informing Americans of how the Fourth Reich has come to our country.
I was at the end pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the book. I read it twice over about 4 days. I already knew a lot about the evidence, but did learn some things I was not up to speed on. This is a highly recommended book for both the experienced and the novice reader interested in how the United States has become what it is today, compared to what it might have been if JFK had served out his two terms. JFK's vision of self sufficient third world mineral wealthy countries and the new One World Government we now have is beautifully explained by Mr. Corsi. This is a book you will want to read a second time and maybe a third time. Get it and overlook the few errors and see the big picture. You will not be disappointed unless you believe LHO alone, without confederates, shot and killed President Kennedy. So my friends like SV Anderson/David Von Pein, Patrick Collins and other paid prostitutes of the CIA and MI-6 can save their emails rebutting this book. If you see a one or two star review for this book, it will have come from those type of paid disinformation specialists.
Stephen Courts
October 16, 2013
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25 October 2013 | The Guardian
In the 1970s, Congressman Otis Pike of New York chaired a special congressional committee to investigate abuses by the American so-called "intelligence community" – the spies. After the investigation, Pike commented:
It took this investigation to convince me that I had always been told lies, to make me realize that I was tired of being told lies.
I'm tired of the spies telling lies, too.
Pike's investigation initiated one of the first congressional oversight debates for the vast and hidden collective of espionage agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). Before the Pike Commission, Congress was kept in the dark about them – a tactic designed to thwart congressional deterrence of the sometimes illegal and often shocking activities carried out by the "intelligence community". Today, we are seeing a repeat of this professional voyeurism by our nation's spies, on an unprecedented and pervasive scale.
Recently, the US House of Representatives voted on an amendment – offered by Representatives Justin Amash and John Conyers – that would have curbed the NSA's omnipresent and inescapable tactics. Despite furious lobbying by the intelligence industrial complex and its allies, and four hours of frantic and overwrought briefings by the NSA's General Keith Alexander, 205 of 422 Representatives voted for the amendment.
Though the amendment barely failed, the vote signaled a clear message to the NSA: we do not trust you. The vote also conveyed another, more subtle message: members of Congress do not trust that the House Intelligence Committee is providing the necessary oversight. On the contrary, "oversight" has become "overlook".
Despite being a member of Congress possessing security clearance, I've learned far more about government spying on me and my fellow citizens from reading media reports than I have from "intelligence" briefings. If the vote on the Amash-Conyers amendment is any indication, my colleagues feel the same way. In fact, one long-serving conservative Republican told me that he doesn't attend such briefings anymore, because, "they always lie".
Many of us worry that Congressional Intelligence Committees are more loyal to the "intelligence community" that they are tasked with policing, than to the Constitution. And the House Intelligence Committee isn't doing anything to assuage our concerns.
I've requested classified information, and further meetings with NSA officials. The House Intelligence Committee has refused to provide either. Supporters of the NSA's vast ubiquitous domestic spying operation assure the public that members of Congress can be briefed on these activities whenever they want. Senator Saxby Chambliss says all a member of Congress needs to do is ask for information, and he'll get it. Well I did ask, and the House Intelligence Committee said "no", repeatedly. And virtually every other member not on the Intelligence Committee gets the same treatment.
Recently, a member of the House Intelligence Committee was asked at a town hall meeting, by his constituents, why my requests for more information about these programs were being denied. This member argued that I don't have the necessary level of clearance to obtain access for classified information. That doesn't make any sense; every member is given the same level of clearance.
There is no legal justification for imparting secret knowledge about the NSA's domestic surveillance activities only to the 20 members of the House Intelligence Committee. Moreover, how can the remaining 415 of us do our job properly, when we're kept in the dark – or worse, misinformed?Edward Snowden's revelations demonstrate that the members of Congress, who are asked to authorize these programs, are not privy to the same information provided to junior analysts at the NSA, and even private contractors who sell services to foreign governments. The only time that these intelligence committees disclose classified information to us, your elected representatives, is when it serves the purposes of the "intelligence community".
As the country continues to debate the supposed benefits of wall-to-wall spying programs on each and every American, without probable cause, the spies, "intelligence community" and Congressional Intelligence Committees have a choice: will they begin sharing comprehensive information about these activities, so that elected public officials have the opportunity to make informed decisions about whether such universal snooping is necessary, or constitutional?
Or will they continue to obstruct our efforts to understand these programs, and force us to rely on information provided by whistleblowers who undertake substantial risks to disseminate this information about violations of our freedom in an increasingly hostile environment? And why do Generals Alexander and Clapper remain in office, when all the evidence points to them committing the felony of lying to Congress and the American people?
Representative Pike would probably say that rank-and-file representatives will never get the information we need from the House Intelligence Committee, because the spying industrial complex answers only to itself. After all, Pike, and many of the members of his special congressional committee, voted against forming it. As it is now constituted, the House Intelligence Committee will never decry, deny, or defy any spy. They see eye-to-eye, so they turn a blind eye. Which means that if we rely on them, we can kiss our liberty good-bye.
BlueLightningI suggest that you read Cyril Northcote Parkinson's essay on committees and how they work.
It appears in the book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress.
That will explain why in any large committee only a few people ever really know what is happening and arrange all the significant decisions before every meeting.
Katikam-> BlueLightning
Bluelightning,
I assume your advice is for readers because surely you'd not advise a seating, twice elected congressman to read a book on how committees work?
In case you didn't understand one of the main points of Grayson's article, all members of Congress have the same security clearance and committees are by law required to provide information when requested by any member. He was illegally denied such information.
AhBrightWings
Though the amendment barely failed, the vote signaled a clear message to the NSA: we do not trust you. The vote also conveyed another, more subtle message: members of Congress do not trust that the House Intelligence Committee is providing the necessary oversight. On the contrary, "oversight" has become "overlook".
I know this is meant to be reassuring, and I really do welcome push back, but with all due respect, this is a bit like saying of the bombing of Hiroshima: We hear there was a bit of a problem in Japan.
Crimes have been committed. Aggressive, grievous, unforgivable ones. Ones calculated to do long term damage. Ones that have eroded the world's trust in us (awoke to hear about Germany's fury over the revelation that Merkel was being tapped). It is long past time to be a bit concerned. The words "law" and "due process" and "international norms" mean nothing if the US gets to keep ignoring them with impunity. It is high time that there were calls for investigations with the full intent to follow through with serious consequences. Until that happens, Congress is not taking this seriously and is not doing its job.
Afaye -> AhBrightWings
Well said AhBrightWings!
Or will they continue to obstruct our efforts to understand these programs, and force us to rely on information provided by whistleblowers who undertake substantial risks to disseminate this information about violations of our freedom in an increasingly hostile environment? And why do Generals Alexander and Clapper remain in office, when all the evidence points to them committing the felony of lying to Congress and the American people?So you are effectively saying that Congress doesn't know anything. Doesn't this mean that a cabal of unelected people are running the US? If there's no effective oversight then it's a coup. Who do they answer to if not congress? If they can get away also with televised bare-faced lies to Congress and get away with it, then what's the point at all in having a Congress?
JCDavis
And why do Generals Alexander and Clapper remain in office, when all the evidence points to them committing the felony of lying to Congress and the American people?
I think the reason is clear. These guys are part of a government takeover and they can't be removed. Even when they retire, they or their friends will be pulling the strings. Blackmail is the order of the day, and our republic, like the Roman republic before it, is just a empty shell.
phrixus
"And why do Generals Alexander and Clapper remain in office, when all the evidence points to them committing the felony of lying to Congress and the American people?"
And what exact actions are you taking to help push forward the prosecutions of these two, sir?
FatMike
Are most members of Congress extremely naive, under some influence or just stupid? Have they forgotten the cautionary tale of Hoover, the historical examples of secret police/surveillance forces like the Stasi? What did they imagine would happen when they gave nearly unlimited power with virtually no oversight to spy agencies that were allowed to operate within the country and amass almost total knowledge of all telecommunications, both domestic and foreign? This might be expected of Obama, who came in with no knowledge of the banking, health, defence or "security" sectors, but members of Congress are not generally unexperienced rookies. Are a few lobbyist dollars really enough for these people to betray their country, to allow its democratic institutions to be undermined or subverted?
TyroneBHorneigh -> FatMike
"Are a few lobbyist dollars really enough for these people to betray their country, to allow its democratic institutions to be undermined or subverted?"
The short answer is the same as the long answer, YES.
teaandchocolate
This is very embarrassing for the USA. It has shown that your government is being manipulated in the same way as the politburo was in the USSR by the KGB.
Spying on allies for trade gain and intelligence will not be forgotten easily. You have a willing British government on your side, but only because they are thick and think the spying is all about counter-terrorism.
This is woeful. Woeful for western freedom and woeful for trust between nations.
Celato
@Alan Grayson -
"... every member [of Congress] is given the same level of clearance [to obtain access to classified information] ... There is no legal justification for imparting secret knowledge about the NSA's domestic surveillance activities only to the 20 members of the House Intelligence Committee."
The rationale is quite simple. As long as those 20 are uniquely privileged with "inside" information, their loyalty can be counted on as members of the NSA "club".
Allowing them SPECIAL access to club secrets flatters their pride as ESPECIALLY trustworthy, and SUPREMELY capable of understanding complex issues and technologies ... unlike Congress's "riff-raff" and "ignoramuses" in the "common herd".
Once securely in the fold, those 20 will protect the NSA's interests - and, of course, secrets - as jealously as they guard their own self-esteem.
You're quite right to "worry that Congressional oversight committees are more loyal to the 'intelligence community' that they are tasked with policing than to the Constitution".
That's indeed where their loyalty lies.
Hottentot
Good article Grayson and it's good to see that many senators are now awake to what Snowden has revealed.
The House Intelligence Committee is in fact doing the US more damage than it realises by not releasing data to any, and all senators. What their behaviour implies is that they have something serious to hide and don't want to be found out. Don't know what the rules are in the US, but surely these people can be removed from office if they are not assisting senators to do their jobs properly? Is it not America who continually spouted, transparency and openness? The House Intelligence Committee is part of America is it not? The committee is there to serve, not to be served.
As for Alexander and Clapper both have lied to congress, to the people of the US as well as those round the world. If they are allowed to get away with this, then how can any senator in either party, or the president stand for upholding the rule of law? it would also make it impossible for a judge to convict someone because the law has to be applicable to all, or else none at all.
The NSA have done great damage, it has no good reputation and it would seem the House Intelligence Committee are adding to that, by their very questionable behaviour and conduct.
TyroneBHorneigh
Recall how even before the Snowden revelations when Senators Wyden and Udall were making subtle noises about how the NSA MAY have been overstepping its authority--Senator Udall's brother was discovered dead on a wilderness hiking trail. A warning shot across Udall's bow??
I would like to say, I think not. But in the current environment I would similarly say, it's not out of the realm of possibility.
thedongerneedfood -> TyroneBHorneigh
'hear hear..'
In its coverage of Hastings' death, the Canada Free Press noted:
It appears that Mr. Hastings made multiple contacts with sources directly associated with the illegal NSA domestic spying program, and either recently acquired materials and/or information about the extent of, the targets of, and the recipients of the information of domestic spying program.
"It is speculated that the latter information was of particular concern to as yet unidentified individuals holding positions of authority within the US Department of Defense and their subcontractors, as well as certain parties within the Executive branch of the United States government.
"Investigation and research suggests that Mr. Hastings might have obtained, or arranged to obtain, information pertaining to the role of a particular high-ranking officer within the US military overseeing the domestic aspects of the NSA project.
thedongerneedfood -> thedongerneedfood
snip'..
"[..]In a world where American Presidents openly arrogate to themselves the right to kill people deemed enemies of the United States, all things suddenly become possible. When the basic right of habeas corpus can be denied to American citizens, based upon unproven allegations of their being threats to this country, isn't it possible for those with the power to detain and to eliminate individuals, to make decisions as to someone's existence doing harm to this country? Finally, doesn't this unconstitutional expansion of powers give individuals with government connections the leeway to take revenge on those who expose them? While I'm not privy to knowledge of the actions of those in power and can claim no inside information, I certainly can speculate based on the experience of my lifetime. This then is my speculation about the death and life of Michael Hastings in the context of current life in these United States."
Jonathan Turley
..
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/20/what-happened-to-michael-hastings/
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RT Op-Edge
Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for the UK's MI5, who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle. She is now a writer, public speaker and a Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.The disparity in response to Edward Snowden's disclosures within the USA and the UK is astonishing.
The disparity in response to Edward Snowden's disclosures within the USA and the UK is astonishing. In the face of righteous public wrath, the US administration is contorting itself to ensure that it does not lose its treasured data-mining capabilities: congressional hearings are held, the media is on the warpath, and senior securocrats are being forced to admit that they have lied about the efficacy of endemic surveillance in preventing terrorism.
Just this week General Alexander, the head of the NSA with a long track record of misleading lying to government, was forced to admit that the endemic surveillance programmes have only helped to foil a couple of terrorist plots. This is a big difference from the previous number of 54 that he was touting around.
Cue calls for the surveillance to be reined in, at least against Americans. In future such surveillance should be restricted to targeted individuals who are being actively investigated. Which is all well and good, but would still leave the rest of the global population living their lives under the baleful stare of the US panopticon. And if the capability continues to exist to watch the rest of the world, how can Americans be sure that the NSA et al won't stealthily go back to watching them once the scandal has died down - or just ask their best buddies in GCHQ to do their dirty work for them?
I'm sure that the UK's GCHQ will be happy to step into the breach. It is already partially funded by the NSA, to the tune of $100 million over the last few years; it has a long history of circumventing US constitutional rights to spy on US citizens (as foreigners), and then simply passing on this information to the grateful NSA, as we know from the old Echelon scandal; and it has far more legal leeway under British oversight laws. In fact, this is positively seen to be a selling point to the Americans from what we have seen in the Snowden disclosures.
Satellite dishes are seen at GCHQ's outpost at Bude, close to where trans-Atlantic fibre-optic cables come ashore in Cornwall, southwest England (Reuters / Kieran Doherty)
GCHQ is absolutely correct in this assessment - the three primary UK intelligence agencies are the least accountable and most legally protected in any western democracy. Not only are they exempt from any real and meaningful oversight, they are also protected against disclosure by the draconian 1989 Official Secrets Act, designed specifically to criminalise whistleblowers, as well as having a raft of legislation to suppress media reporting should such disclosures emerge.
This might, indeed, be the reason that the UK media is not covering the Snowden disclosures more extensively - a self-censoring "D" Notice has been issued against the media, and The Guardian had its UK servers smashed up by the secret police. 1930s Germany, anyone?
Defenders of the status quo have already been out in force. Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is notionally responsible for GCHQ, said cosily that everything was legal and proportionate, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the current chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee in parliament last week staunchly declared that the ISC had investigated GCHQ and found that its data mining was all legal as it had ministerial approval.
Well that's all OK then. Go back to sleep, citizens of the UK.
What Hague and Rifkind neglected to say was that the ministerial warrantry system was designed to target individual suspects, not whole populations. Plus, as the Foreign secretary in charge of MI6 at the time of the illegal assassination plot against Gaddafi in 1996, Rifkind of all people should know that the spies are "economical with the truth".
In addition, as I've written before, many former top spies and police have admitted that they misled lied to the ISC. Sure, Rifkind has managed to acquire some new powers of oversight for the ISC, but they are still too little and 20 years too late.
This mirrors what has been going on in the US over the last few years, with senior intelligence official after senior official being caught out lying to congressional committees. While in the UK statements to the ISC have to date not been made under oath, statements made to the US Congress are - so why on earth are apparent perjurers like Clapper and Alexander even still in a job, let alone not being prosecuted?
It appears that the US is learning well from its former colonial master about all things official secrecy, up to and including illegal operations that can be hushed up with the nebulous and legally undefined concept of "national security", the use of fake intelligence to take us to war, and the persecution of whistleblowers.
Except the US has inevitably super-sized the war on whistleblowers. While in the UK we started out with the 1911 Official Secrets Act, under which traitors could be imprisoned for 14 years, in 1989 the law was amended to include whistleblowers - for which the penalty is 2 years on each charge.
The US, however, only has its hoary old Espionage Act dating back to 1917 and designed to prosecute traitors. With no updates and amendments, this is the act that is now rolled out to threaten modern whistleblowers working in the digital age. And the provisions can go as far as the death penalty.
President Obama and the US intelligence establishment are using this law to wage a war on whistleblowers. During his presidency he has tried to prosecute seven whistleblowers under this Espionage Act - more than all the previous presidents combined - and yet when real spies are caught, as in the case of the Russian Spy Ring in 2010, Obama was happy to cut a deal and send them home.
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August 26, 2013 | The American Conservative
Fran Macadam
The President cannot resist the slouch towards war, for just the same reason he has failed to live up to the rest of his speechifying. It is the one he gave, as quoted in The Christian Century, for the failures to reform Wall Street's rampant and aggravated banksterism: "I would have liked to, but it would have pissed off too many powerful people."With recidivist mendacity even more starkly shadowed against the truth in recent surveillance revelations, it seems in doubt that the first part of that excuse is fully true, though the latter assuredly is.
There is simply too much of a revenue stream for donorist elites to give up constant war. The rewards for elusive success are for them a risk-free investment, with losses socialized by the American people and benefits privatized for themselves.
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A Syria 'No-fly Zone' and Just War Theory
by James Carden, July 01, 2013Now that the White House has come to the conclusion that Bashar al-Assad has indeed employed chemical weapons on a small scale against the Syrian opposition, the questions over what to do next have taken on ever greater urgency. Speaking to CNN recently, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), said that "we should be able to establish a no-fly zone relatively easily." Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) also expressed his support for a no-fly zone, while House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) stated, "The United States should assist the Turks and our Arab League partners to create safe zones in Syria from which the U.S. and our allies can train, arm, and equip vetted opposition forces." So as the pro-interventionist rhetoric heats up, it might be to our benefit to step back and consider whether or not committing an act of war against Syria, and that is precisely what establishing a no-fly zone would entail, would be justified under the tenets of Just War Theory.
The term 'just war' was first used by Augustine of Hippo in The City of God, and the concept was later refined and codified by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century. Just War Theory had, until the advent of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war in 2003, commonly served as the set of criteria which had to be met in order for a nation-state to morally justify the commencement of hostilities against another nation-state. It consists of 2 categories: Jus Ad Bellum (right to war) and Jus In Bello (law in war).
To meet the requirements of Jus Ad Bellum, 4 conditions must be met: Just Cause, Just Intention, Just Authority, and Last Resort. The question we need to answer, then, is: does the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against the Syrian rebels provide the U.S. with Just Cause that would allow it to commit an act of war against Syria? At no time since the commencement of hostilities between the parties within Syria in March 2011 has the Assad regime attacked either the U.S. or any of its allies, skirmishes on the Syrian/Turkish border notwithstanding. In order that the requirement of Just Cause be met, the U.S. would had to have been attacked (or was in actual imminent danger of being attacked) by the Assad regime. This has not happened, and so the justification for the establishment of a no-fly zone would not be met. As such, the requirement of Just Intention would also not be met because a nation-state cannot commence hostilities without a legitimate cause and still claim right intention.
What about the requirement of Just Authority? Let's say hypothetically that Assad had in fact launched a direct attack on the U.S. or one of its allies. While the U.S. would then have cause to engage in hostilities against Syria, it would, in order to meet the requirement of Just Authority, have to do so with explicit authorization from the U.S. Senate. Unilateral acts of war initiated solely by the Executive (such as the Nixon administration's secret bombing of Cambodia) are verboten under Just War theory.
The condition of Last Resort would only be met once every last peaceful option had been exhausted. We are clearly far from meeting the criterion of Last Resort as things stand right now; the US and Russia are working on convening a peace conference between the two sides in Geneva this July and there still, according to Middle East expert Dr. Vali Nasr, remain "powerful economic sanctions that the U.S. could use to cripple the Assad regime."
The category of Jus In Bello has mainly to do with the conduct of a war once joined and as such is somewhat less of a concern at this stage, but a few points might be worth making. Three conditions, those of Proportionality, Discrimination, and Responsibility must be met in order to satisfy the requirements of Jus In Bello. Taken together, they are intended to serve as safeguards against indiscriminate violence against noncombatants and disproportionate actions against enemy nation-states. The principles of Jus In Bello are enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which, it never hurts to remind the war hawks in Congress, the U.S. is still a party to. If our recent history of Greater Middle Eastern interventions is any guide, we would be hard pressed to be able to honestly say to ourselves, or to the international community, that we possess the competence to fulfill any of these three conditions.
Writing at the dawn of the Cold War almost 60 years ago, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned against 'the monstrous consequences of moral complacency about the relation of dubious means to supposedly good ends.' This is a lesson that has, I'm afraid to say, been lost on the most vocal proponents of war with Syria. If the United States proceeds to act on the recommendations of the interventionists without paying heed to the ancient and venerable tradition of Just War Theory then no good – despite the best of intentions – will come of the effort.
Until recently James Carden served as an Adviser to the Office of Russian Affairs at the State Department. He has contributed pieces on foreign affairs to The National Interest and The Moscow Times.
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June 17th, 2013
When Edward Snowden, an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton - a military contractor based in McLean, Virginia - blew the whistle on the extent of U.S. global electronic surveillance, he unexpectedly shone a light on the world of contractors that consume some 70 percent of the $52 billion U.S. intelligence budget.
Some commentators have pounced on Snowden's disclosures to denounce the role of private contractors in the world of government and national security, arguing that such work is best left to public servants. But their criticism misses the point.
It is no longer possible to determine the difference between employees of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the employees of companies such as Booz Allen, who have integrated to the extent that they slip from one role in industry to another in government, cross-promoting each other and self-dealing in ways that make the fabled revolving door redundant, if not completely disorienting.
Snowden, who was employed by Booz Allen as a contract systems administrator at the NSA's Threat Operations Centre in Hawaii for three months, had worked for the CIA and Dell before getting his most recent job. But his rather obscure role pales in comparison to those of others.
Pushing for Expanded Surveillance
To best understand this tale, one must first turn to R. James Woolsey, a former director of CIA, who appeared before the U.S. Congress in the summer of 2004 to promote the idea of integrating U.S. domestic and foreign spying efforts to track "terrorists".
One month later, he appeared on MSNBC television, where he spoke of the urgent need to create a new U.S. intelligence czar to help expand the post-9/11 national surveillance apparatus.
On neither occasion did Woolsey mention that he was employed as senior vice president for global strategic security at Booz Allen, a job he held from 2002 to 2008.
"The source of information about vulnerabilities of and potential attacks on the homeland will not be dominated by foreign intelligence, as was the case in the Cold War. The terrorists understood us well, and so they lived and planned where we did not spy (inside the U.S.)," said Woolsey in prepared remarks before the U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland Security on June 24, 2004.
In a prescient suggestion of what Snowden would later reveal, Woolsey went on to discuss expanding surveillance to cover domestic, as well as foreign sources.
"One source will be our vulnerability assessments, based on our own judgments about weak links in our society's networks that can be exploited by terrorists," he said. "A second source will be domestic intelligence. How to deal with such information is an extraordinarily difficult issue in our free society."
In late July 2004, Woolsey appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball", a news-talk show hosted by Chris Matthews, and told Matthews that the federal government needed a new high-level office – a director of national intelligence – to straddle domestic and foreign intelligence. Until then, the director of the CIA served as the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community.
"The problem is that the intelligence community has grown so much since 1947, when the position of director of central intelligence was created, that it's (become) impossible to do both jobs, running the CIA and managing the community," he said.
Both these suggestions would lead to influential jobs and lucrative sources of income for Woolsey's employer and colleagues.
The Director of National Intelligence
Fast forward to 2007. Vice Admiral Michael McConnell (retired), Booz Allen's then-senior vice president of policy, transformation, homeland security and intelligence analytics, was hired as the second czar of the new "Office of the Director of National Intelligence" which was coincidentally located just three kilometers from the company's corporate headquarters.
Upon retiring as DNI, McConnell returned to Booz Allen in 2009, where he serves as vice chairman to this day. In August 2010, Lieutenant General James Clapper (retired), a former vice president for military intelligence at Booz Allen from 1997 to 1998, was hired as the fourth intelligence czar, a job he has held ever since. Indeed, one-time Booz Allen executives have filled the position five of the eight years of its existence.
When these two men took charge of the national-security state, they helped expand and privatize it as never before.
McConnell, for example, asked Congress to alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow the NSA to spy on foreigners without a warrant if they were using Internet technology that routed through the United States.
"The resulting changes in both law and legal interpretations (... and the) new technologies created a flood of new work for the intelligence agencies – and huge opportunities for companies like Booz Allen," wrote David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth in a profile of McConnell published in the New York Times this weekend.
Last week, Snowden revealed to the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald that the NSA had created a secret system called "Prism" that allowed the agency to spy on electronic data of ordinary citizens around the world, both within and outside the United States.
Snowden's job at Booz Allen's offices in Hawaii was to maintain the NSA's information technology systems. While he did not specify his precise connection to Prism, he told the South China Morning Post newspaper that the NSA hacked "network backbones – like huge Internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one".
Indeed Woolsey had argued in favor of such surveillance following the disclosure of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping by the New York Times in December 2005.
"Unlike the Cold War, our intelligence requirements are not just overseas," he told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the NSA in February 2006. "Courts are not designed to deal with fast-moving battlefield electronic mapping in which an al Qaeda or a Hezbollah computer might be captured which contains a large number of email addresses and phone numbers which would have to be checked out very promptly."
Propaganda PuppetsRoger Cressey, a senior vice president for cybersecurity and counter-terrorism at Booz Allen who is also a paid commentator for NBC News, went on air multiple times to explain how the government would pursue the Boston Marathon case in April 2013. "We always need to understand there are priority targets the counter-terrorism community is always looking at," he told the TV station. Cressey took a position "on one of the most controversial aspects of the government response to Boston that completely reflects the views of the government agencies – such as the FBI and the CIA – that their companies ultimately serve," wrote Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire, on Salon. "Their views, in turn, convinces NBC hosts of the wisdom of the policy, a stance which could easily sway an uncertain public about the legitimacy of the new face of state power that has emerged in the post-9/11 period. That is influence, yet it is not fully disclosed by NBC."
This was not the first time that Cressey had been caught at this when speaking to NBC News. Cressey failed to disclose that his former employer – Good Harbor Consulting - had been paid for advice by the government of Yemen, when he went on air to criticize democracy protests in Yemen in March 2011. (Cressey has just been hired by Booz Allen at the time)
"What is not disclosed about Cressey in this segment where he scaremongers about a post-Saleh Yemen is that he has multiple conflicts of interest with the current regime there," wrote Zaid Jilani of ThinkProgress at the time.
A Flood of New Contracts
Exactly what Booz Allen does for the NSA's electronic surveillance system revealed by Snowden is classified, but one can make an educated guess from similar contracts it has in this field – a quarter of the company's $5.86 billion in annual income comes from intelligence agencies.The NSA, for example, hired Booz Allen in 2001 in an advisory role on the five-billion-dollar Project Groundbreaker to rebuild and operate the agency's "nonmission-critical" internal telephone and computer networking systems.
Booz Allen also won a chunk of the Pentagon's infamous Total Information Awareness contract in 2001 to collect information on potential terrorists in America from phone records, credit card receipts and other databases – a controversial program defunded by Congress in 2003 but whose spirit survived in Prism and other initiatives disclosed by Snowden.
The CIA pays a Booz Allen team led by William Wansley, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, for "strategic and business planning" for its National Clandestine Service, which conducts covert operations and recruits foreign spies.
The company also provides a 120-person team, headed by a former U.S. Navy cryptology lieutenant commander and Booz Allen senior executive adviser Pamela Lentz, to support the National Reconnaissance Organization, the Pentagon agency that manages the nation's military spy satellites.
In January, Booz Allen was one of 12 contractors to win a five-year contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency that could be worth up to $5.6 billion to focus on "computer network operations, emerging and disruptive technologies, and exercise and training activity".
Last month, the U.S. Navy picked Booz Allen as part of a consortium to work on yet another billion-dollar project for "a new generation of intelligence, surveillance and combat operations".
How does Booz Allen wins these contracts? Well, in addition to its connections with the DNI, the company boasts that half of its 25,000 employees are cleared for "top secret-sensitive compartmented intelligence" - one of the highest possible security ratings. (One third of the 1.4 million people with such clearances work for the private sector.)
A key figure at Booz Allen is Ralph Shrader, current chairman, CEO and president, who came to the company in 1974 after working at two telecommunications companies – RCA, where he served in the company's government communications system division and Western Union, where he was national director of advanced systems planning.
In the 1970s, RCA and Western Union both took part in a secret surveillance program known as Minaret, where they agreed to give the NSA all their clients' incoming and outgoing U.S. telephone calls and telegrams.
In an interview with the Financial Times in 1998, Shrader noted that the most relevant background for his new position of chief executive at Booz Allen was his experience working for telecommunications clients and doing classified military work for the US government.
Caught for Shoddy Work
How much value for money is the government getting? A review of some of Booz Allen's public contracts suggests that much of this work has been of poor quality.In February 2012, the U.S. Air Force suspended Booz Allen from seeking government contracts after it discovered that Joselito Meneses, a former deputy chief of information technology for the air force, had given Booz Allen a hard drive with confidential information about a competitor's contracting on the first day that he went to work for the company in San Antonio, Texas.
"Booz Allen did not uncover indications and signals of broader systemic ethical issues within the firm," wrote the U.S. Air Force legal counsel. "These events caused the Air Force to have serious concerns regarding the responsibility of Booz Allen, specifically, its San Antonio office, including its business integrity and honesty, compliance with government contracting requirements, and the adequacy of its ethics program."
It should be noted that Booz Allen reacted swiftly to the government investigation of the conflict of interest. In April that year, the Air Force lifted the suspension – but only after Booz Allen had accepted responsibility for the incident and fired Meneses, as well as agreeing to pay the air force $65,000 and reinforce the firm's ethics policy.
Not everybody was convinced about the new regime. "Unethical behavior brought on by the revolving door created problems for Booz Allen, but now the revolving door may have come to the rescue," wrote Scott Amey of the Project on Government Oversight, noting that noting that Del Eulberg, vice-president of the Booz Allen's San Antonio office had served as chief engineer in the Air Force.
"It couldn't hurt having (former Air Force people). Booz is likely exhaling a sigh of relief as it has received billions of dollars in air force contracts over the years."
That very month, Booz Allen was hired to build a $10 million "Enhanced Secured Network" (ESN) for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. An audit of the project released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office this past February showed that it was full of holes.
The ESN "left software and systems put in place misconfigured-even failing to take advantage of all the features of the malware protection the commission had selected, leaving its workstations still vulnerable to attack," wrote Sean Gallagher, a computer reporter at ArsTechnica.
Booz Allen has also admitted to overbilling the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) "employees at higher job categories than would have been justified by their experience, inflating their monthly hours and submitting excessive billing at their off-site rate." The company repaid the government $325,000 in May 2009 to settle the charges.
Nor was this the first time Booz Allen had been caught overbilling. In 2006, the company was one of four consulting firms that settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for fiddling expenses on an industrial scale. Booz Allen's share of the $15 million settlement of a lawsuit under the False Claims Act was more than $3.3 million.
Incidentally, both the NASA and the Air Force incidents were brought to light by a company whistleblower who informed the government.
Investigate Booz Allen, Not Edward Snowden
When Snowden revealed the extent of the U.S. national surveillance program earlier this month, he was denounced immediately by Booz Allen and their former associates who called for an investigation of his leaks.
"For me, it is literally – not figuratively – literally gut-wrenching to see this happen because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities," Clapper told NBC News's Andrea Mitchell. "This is someone who, for whatever reason, has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country. I think we all feel profoundly offended by that."
"News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," Booz Allen said in a press statement.Yet instead of shooting the messenger, Edward Snowden, it might be worth investigating Shrader and his company's core values in the same way that the CIA and NSA were scrutinized for Minaret in the 1970s by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Frank Church of Idaho in 1975.
Congress would also do well to investigate Clapper, Booz Allen's other famous former employee, for possible perjury when he replied: "No, sir" to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when asked: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
* Excerpts of this piece appeared on the Guardian's Comment is Free and Inter Press Service. Jim Lobe contributed research.
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Zero Hedge
From its origins as a management consulting firm, Booz Allen has quietly grown into a government-wide contracting behemoth, fed by ballooning post-Sept. 11 intelligence budgets and Washington's increasing reliance on outsourcing. With 24,500 employees and 99% of its revenues from the federal government, its growth in the last decade has been stunning (and until very recently with little to no knowledge from the main street that it even exists).
Via Bloomberg BusinessWeek,In 1940, a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy began to think about what a war with Germany would look like. The admirals worried in particular about the Kriegsmarine's fleet of U-boats, which were preying on Allied shipping and proving impossible to find, much less sink. Stymied, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox turned to Booz, Fry, Allen & Hamilton, a consulting firm in Chicago whose best-known clients were Goodyear Tire & Rubber (GT) and Montgomery Ward.
The firm had effectively invented management consulting, deploying whiz kids from top schools as analysts and acumen-for-hire to corporate clients. Working with the Navy's own planners, Booz consultants developed a special sensor system that could track the U-boats' brief-burst radio communications and helped design an attack strategy around it. With its aid, the Allies by war's end had sunk or crippled most of the German submarine fleet.
That project was the start of a long collaboration. As the Cold War set in, intensified, thawed, and was supplanted by global terrorism in the minds of national security strategists, the firm, now called Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), focused more and more on government work. In 2008 it split off its less lucrative commercial consulting arm - under the name Booz & Co. - and became a pure government contractor, publicly traded and majority-owned by private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG).
In the fiscal year ended in March 2013, Booz Allen Hamilton reported $5.76 billion in revenue, 99 percent of which came from government contracts, and $219 million in net income. Almost a quarter of its revenue - $1.3 billion - was from major U.S. intelligence agencies. Along with competitors such as Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), CACI, and BAE Systems (BAESY), the McLean (Va.)-based firm is a prime beneficiary of an explosion in government spending on intelligence contractors over the past decade. About 70 percent of the 2013 U.S. intelligence budget is contracted out, according to a Bloomberg Industries analysis; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says almost a fifth of intelligence personnel work in the private sector.
It's safe to say that most Americans, if they'd heard of Booz Allen at all, had no idea how huge a role it plays in the U.S. intelligence infrastructure. They do now.
LetThemEatRand
Welfare Queen.
Jack Burton
Indeed Rand. These greedy corporate bloodsucking bastards hate us for our freedoms. Meanwhile Obama is now sending weapons direct to Al-qaeda terrorists and cannibals. See the irony in all this? WHat do the loyal Republicans say about the corporate interests who suck Washington dry?
Larry Dallas
Yes. Every day it becomes more apparant that 9/11 created one of the most profitable industries since WW2. Anti-terrorism.
War is never accidental. It is always carefully manufactured.
- Larry Dallas, 2013
CH1:
Dwight Eisenhower was SOOOOO right.
Taint Boil
Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket that is fired, signifies a theft from those that are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing: Dwight David Eisenhower
All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing: Dwight Eisenhower
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
smacker
As it says - and I always suspected - nobody, not even the President, has a handle let alone control, of this out-of-control 4th branch of government.
The only real solution is for the elected government to send in a fleet of bulldozers and demolish the whole lot and arrest every last unelected power-broker.
prains
in other words 9/11 was the best thing ever to happen for Booz and its buddies.........hmmmmm?
Cognitive Dissonance
One must always ask "Cui bono" when considering the dark side of the universe. After all war IS a racket.
SafelyGraze:
you're not going to believe this but ..
NBC used to produce a game show called 21. this was back in the nine-teen and 50s.
wait. that's not the amazing part.
the show was *fixed*! scripted!
wait. that's not the amazing part.
NBC's evening news department somehow had No Idea that the quiz show was faked.
wait. that's not the amazing part.
congress passed a law.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/509
It shall be unlawful for any person, with intent to deceive the listening or viewing public-
(1) To supply to any contestant in a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge or intellectual skill any special and secret assistance whereby the outcome of such contest will be in whole or in part prearranged or predetermined.
wait. that's not the amazing part.
we are all contestants in a purportedly bona fide contest, but the outcome is in whole or in part pre-arranged
wait. that's not the amazing part.
nobody is prosecuting the perpetrators!
but wait. that's not the amazing part.
nobody seems to mind.
earleflorida
Funny,... nothings really changed in the world's geopolitical sense?
The USSR is fast aligning itself with annex'd satellite nations! China is now a super-power in its own right! Japan is the same ole,.. old infighting hostile nation of nationalist? India has growing pains as always... what's news!
Africa is still a colonial household for Europe? Germany has unified and still a worry-wart for the British 'Grey-Poupon!? The UK is still the entire planets grandfather with one foot in the grave? The ME is going back in time and rethinking its future without Emir's! Afghanistan is still triumphant-- the empire destroyer?
France is as always a pussy`cunt... as in retarded 'FrenchFry'd!!!
South America likes where it's at post US colonialization, and Mexico has taken back California?! Lastly, the USSA has accepted the grandiose privilege of adding a well deserved acronym "S" as in world 'S'saviour... Nought!!!
thankyou Tyler
GRAT'S :)
GoldRulesPaperDrools
BAH is now just a (somewhat) better-paid extension of the government given the government will take almost anyone as a federal employee regardless of (lack of) skill level. As the government hires more incompetents as government employees to swell the ranks of the Democratic Party, er, I mean government staff ... what do you need then?
More contractors to do the real work that your government welfare babies, er I mean government employees, aren't capable of doing themselves. This is how government incompetence breeds more government incompetence, cost, and waste.
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NYT
Daniel Hudson, Ridgefield, CT
An excellent example of how we get drawn into the military option. No matter how disastrously Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan turn out to be for us, there are never any real consequences to those who suck us in.
Those who ought to exercise a proper caution lose their courage fearing that they will get blamed for the human costs of civil wars in other countries while knowing that as long as they show proper machismo there will be little criticism of their sending fellow citizens (younger ones) to become casualties in futile endeavors in foreign lands.
P BrandMemphis, TN
Dear Mr. Keller,
Go read Andrew Bacevich's "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism". If that doesn't change your mind, read his other books on American interventionism and militarism. Finally, if that doesn't change your mind, then volunteer yourself and your children to fight in Syria.
If you want to help us "get over" Iraq perhaps you should go there and work as a volunteer in the Shite slums of Bagdad to make it into a Jeffersonian democracy. Good luck with that.
oneill.gw, Silver Spring Md.
Are your kids in the military Keller. Would you be okay if a relative or dear friend was killed in action there? I doubt it
Bob Brown, NYC
I can't agree with much of what you write. Nor do I think we should act militarily.
1. We all tend to make excuses for people we like. The president didn't say the use of gas would "raise the stakes." He said it's a red line.
2. You wrote that we should have intervened a year ago before the rise of the Jihadists. But that the president was busy with other things -winding down the war in Afghanistan, Ohio, etc. Mr. Keller, if anyone on the planet should know how to multitask, it's the POTUS. And if he's busy, he's supposed to delegate to a proper person for the heavy lifting. I wonder if you would be so forgiving if a politician you disdained acted in the same way.
3. You write that we should send missiles to take out Assad's airforce. Why? All of the reports state that the Salafists are in the vanguard and probably a majority of the rebel fighters. If the rebels win, they will go on a mass killing spree of Alawites, and maybe other minorities. There is a reason that Syria's minorities have not joined the fight. They know what awaits them if the rebels win. So, if you're a member of a Syrian minority (30%), or a modern educated woman, you sure don't want a rebel victory.
4. You write that the US should take the lead and we'll have allies this time. Why take the lead? Perhaps Britain or France should. France is currently fighting Jihadists in Mali, a former French colony. Let's remember, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 gave France the mandate for Syria
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July 15, 2011 | Antiwar.com
In a free economy, the banks that invested trillions in risky mortgages and other fool's gold would have taken the hit. Instead, however, what happened is that the American taxpayers took the hit, paid the bill, and cleaned up their mess – and were condemned to suffer record unemployment, massive foreclosures, and the kind of despair that kills the soul.
How did this happen? There are two versions of this little immorality tale, one coming from the "left" and the other from the "right" (the scare-quotes are there for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment or two).
The "left" version goes something like this:
The evil capitalists, in league with their bought-and-paid for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal.
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Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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