Scott – Public Intelligence Blog

2015/01/03

Review (Guest): The American Deep State – Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on US Democracy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Peter Dale Scott

5 Star Connecting the Dots

By The Peripatetic Reader on December 13, 2014

Peter Dale Scott has written many books about the Deep State at work in the U.S. government. Scott depicts American society as structurally and inherently schizophrenic. Just as there is the public government and the deep government, and ordinary events and deep events, there are two dominant forces permeating United States history: One egalitarian, believing in fairness, inclusion, and free expression, and the other militaristic and exclusionary, which is only interested in social control.

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2014/03/242014/03/24

Review (Guest): Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Peter Dale Scott

The Expanded Context of American Politics

By Herbert L Calhoun on November 16, 2006

Along with Carl Oglesby's The Yankee [and] Cowboy War and Michael Piper Collins' Final Judgment, this is the best book ever written on the JFK Assassination. It may also be the best book ever written on the way the American political process ACTUALLY works. It is certainly the most honest one.

Deep Politics should be required reading for undergraduates in all American college and university Political Science courses. If for no reason other than that, in the course of getting at the bottom of the assassination of JFK, Professor Scott did not hesitate to expand the context of American political life to those unacceptable areas that lay just beneath the American consciousness and at the bottom of the American political undercurrents.

Once one is guided through his process of expanding the context of understanding (or actually “over-understanding”) the machinations of the American Political process (its corruption, deceptions, cover-ups, and other pretexts for explaining away its immorality), then the details of the assassination itself, are almost a foregone conclusions – little more than a logical afterthought.

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2011/03/042011/03/04

Review (Guest): Seeing Like a State–How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Military & Pentagon Power, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Professor James C. Scott (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars Structural Dysfunctionalism

November 18, 2001

ByMichael Biggs (Oxford, United Kingdom) – See all my reviews

James Scott is known for portraying the moral world of peasants, showing how they have resisted the encroachment of capitalism and the state. Now he investigates the other side: the experts, bureaucrats, and revolutionaries whose grandiose schemes to improve the human condition have inflicted untold misery on the twentieth century. Seeing Like a State can be read, along with Foucault's Discipline and Punish and James Ferguson's The Anti-Politics Machine, as a classic of ‘structural dysfunctionalism.' The point (put metaphorically) is not merely that the cure for social ills has proven inadequate-but that the disease inhered in the diagnosis, and that failure will continue so long as the doctors prevail.

The dysfunction, Scott argues, derived from three modern conditions.

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2010/12/042010/12/04

Review (DVD): Robin Hood

5 Star, Crime (Government), Culture, DVD - Light, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Reviews (DVD Only), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Actors: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Matthew Macfadyen, Max von Sydow, William Hurt
Directors: Ridley Scott

Righteous, Timely, Absorbing

December 4, 2010

I like the first and most popular review by the scholar. Here I will provide a snap-shot of my own and a couple of quotations from a rather good wikipedia review of Thoreau.

The film was longer, better, and had more stars than I expected, including William Hurt. Triteness was avoided. Above all, this movie is righteous and timely as we contemplate the present situation.

From Wikipedia on Thoreau:

The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is “not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

The movie ends where I expected to begin. And now America begins anew, with a convergence of forces in 2012, where I had hoped it might end with peace and prosperity for all. The fight has only now begun as the public has awakened to the injustices done at our expense and in our name.

RIGHTEOUS.

Here are two lists of lists of summary reviews of non-fiction work that bears on the current and future nature of the world. Both are at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog under REVIEWS.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Down at the bottom of the middle column I also have 116 DVD reviews for smart people that dislike run of the mill fare.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2009/12/26

Reference: US Responsibility for Atrocities in Indonesia

04 Indonesia, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Law Enforcement, Military

Phi Beta Iota: We take everything with some skepticism. We are quite certain that 95% or more of the U.S. officers training Indonesian military and police personnel had no intention of enabling the atrocities that came later–the problem–as we personally experienced in Central America–is when the 1% to 5%, including personal emissaries from the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency all say that there will be no U.S. retribution or blow-back from committing atrocities using US training, equipment, and forms of organization intended to counter bona-fide subversion. Hence, one bad apple rots the entire barrel of good apples.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide

Summary Review Intended to Inspire Wrath of US Voters,June 20, 2009

James Scott

I have reviewed earlier books on the Liberty, and stood with the Liberty survivors and their kin in believing that the U.S. Government then led by Lyndon Johnson betrayed the public trust in this instance. A handful of books support the general betrayal of the public trust that began with Lyndon Johnson and continues to this day:
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New and Updated Edition
Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

That is the context within which the USS Liberty was attacked with impunity, and the deliberate attack covered up by the US Government, i.e. the White House and Cy Vance the Secretary of Defense. The US Navy protested but was silenced.

Perhaps the most important contribution this book makes is to record the current (2007) views of participants on both sides to the effect that this was a deliberate premeditated attack ordered by a person high enough in Israel to order the combined “joint” attack by both air force attack jets and naval torpedo boats.

The book confirms what has been claimed before, that the vessel was known to be US, and that the American flag was clearly seen by the attackers. DCI Richard Helms, interviewed in 2008, specifically confirmed the atrocity.

QUOTE from page 47: “The fighters destroyed the Liberty's machine guns, knocked out the antennas, and targeted the bridge to kill the officers and spark chaos among the crew.”

I am especially angry at the manner in which the Israeli's have bought the US Congress along with Wall Street and the banking world. See for instance:
They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Israel also spies with impunity on the US, both with formal and technical spy networks such as depicted in Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, where every American Jew is considered a “sayonim,” a person who will support Israel spy operations that are treason against the US, and with non-official spying such as Congresswoman Jane “this conversation never happened” Harman supports.

The book is both a labor of love and extremely well-executed investigative journalism.

Israel murdered 34 US naval personnel and wounded 171. This was an international war crime.

This is a RIGHTEOUS BOOK (I actually write this just before putting the book down). Here are some of my notes:

+ Immediate impact of the cover-up was the failure to learn anything, such that the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans (at the request for the Soviets, completing their needs for use of the crypto cards they acquired earlier).

+ Middle of the book is sad sickening detail not here-to-fore presented in such an organized and detailed manner, along with 22 compelling shameful photographs of battle damage. Points to remember:

–Smell of rotting bodies

–Oil-soaked environment

–Partial bodies were a recovery & identification challenge

+ Communications breakdowns combined with a quick Israeli apology kept reinforcements from reaching the Liberty for 17 hours.

+ The Skipper ramped readiness up, wanted to move, but would have lost line of sight needed for NSA intercepts. Similarly, Navy advisor to Adm McCain (the father) wanted to pull the Liberty back at same time that a submarine was pulled back, but Admiral McCain did not want to tangle with NSA and claimed he did not have the authority when he actually did. (Later he redeems himself somewhat by insisting on Purple Hearts and combat pay.]

+ The context (Viet-Nam in particular) made the Liberty a “problem” for LBJ. Quote from page 93: “The Liberty–now riddled with cannon blasts, its decks soaked in blood, and its starboard side ripped open by a torpedo–evolved in a matter of hours from a top-secret intelligence asset to a domestic political liability.”

+ We learn that LBJ's upbringing taught him to favor Jews, and that “Johnson has too heavy a roster of Jewish and pro-Israeli advisors” (page 139.

+ We learn that Pentagon loyalists toed the party line on covering the whole thing up.

+ We learn that the US inquiry did not answer the question “How and why did this happen,” that Admiral McCain forbade travel to Israel, and that the Israeli's were not forthcoming with logs from any of the attacking units.

+ We learn that the original Israeli “investigation” was done by one officer alone, and after very angry exchanges on all sides, redone with an outcome of 7 counts of negligence recommended and not accepted. The final report from Israel is riddled with lies that are pointed out by the Israeli Ambassador himself in furious messages home. I am reminded of Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed its Own POWs in Vietnam and Is Anybody Listening?: A True Story About POW/MIAs In The Vietnam War.

+ We learn the Israeli's ordered napalm to be used against the USS Liberty as it would be “more efficient,” and we learn that the US politicians in the White House considered sinking the USS Liberty at sea to get rid of the evidence–one can only recoil in horror knowing that they considered the crew “expendable” and did not care if it was sunk with or without crew.

+ We learn that the US was willing to accept $3.3 million for the families, and the Israeli'[s refused, offering $1.25 million. Ultimately the Israeli bill came to $17 million of which $9 million was interest, and they finally settled for $6 million in three payments of $2 million each. What the author does NOT tell us is that the US taxpayer pays 20% of the entire Israeli government budget every year at the same time that the USA turns a blind eye to Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and Israeli theft of water from the Arab aquifers (see Chuck Spinney's brief on this at oss.net).

The book ends on a graceful note. I am impressed by the author's balance throughout. He finally visits Israel and meets one of the pilots, now Brigadier General Yiftah Spector. Accompanied by his father, who served on the USS Liberty, the author witnesses the Israeli officer saying “I'm sorry,” and his father saying “Thank you.”

2007/09/032009/12/04

Review: The Road to 9/11–Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

6 Star Top 10%, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History

Stunning Work of Immense Value to Every American

September 3, 2007

Peter Dale Scott

I put this book down in something of a daze. This is one of the top five books relevant to understanding Dick Cheney, 9/11, Iraq, and the demise of the Republic.

This author is a Nobel-level researcher who has specialized in cover-ups and conspiracies, who with this book has fourteen serious books in being, a few of them poetry of a serious nature.

The book begins with a lovely list of nineteen trailblazers that is galringly incomplete, but a nice touch and worthy of note.

As I worked my way through the book I was thinking to myself that this author has brought together, in one volume in which half the pages are endnotes, much of what I have been trying to address in my 950+ reviews and my lists on Cheney and 9/11 and anti-Americanism.

The author is superbly credible and well-written in documenting the many miscalculations that have been the result of the intersection between Saudi Arabia, Texas and Geneva, and aggravated (my own view) by Zionists and Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. I have a note, “tontos utiles,” which is what Americans are called in Latin America: “useful idiots.” In reality, Cheney is not an idiot, he is simply the most amoral war criminal to ever sit in the Oval Office.

The author is extremely good at showing how Cheney's power emerged with the creation of the Continuity of Operations (COG) parallel government during the Reagan Administration. I am quite certain that Dick Cheney was controlling every aspect of US Government operations on 9/11, and I believe this book and the other books listed below to the point that I feel the 9/11 Commission was a cover-up, and We the People must indict and impeach Dick Cheney or be forever disgraced in the eyes of the world as accomplices to his murderous misdeeds and his 25 high crimes and misdemeanors.

The author ends the book beautifully, with a call for Open Politics that ends with glossary of open politics. Readers may be interested in my keynote speech to Gnomedex in Seattle, “Open Everything, which will shortly be available at my web site as a 9 minute download, with the slides easily found at my website/GNOME.

The author is an English professor, and I can think of no higher praise for his work than to say he is the most erudite patriot I have ever read. This is a moving thoughtful work of enormous importance to those who wish to save the Republic and the Constitution from the criminals and traiors that have hijacked the three branches of the federal government.

There are 27 secessionist movements for good reason. If we do not act now, before 2008, every one of those 27 secessionist movements will have every right to withdraw from what has become the most dangerous rogue nation on the planet. What is being done “in our name” is immoral, unaffordable, unsustainable, and unnecessary. It's time we took the Republic back.