This book could have been titled a Tom Engelhardt Reader; it is a collection of revised and updated articles from TomDispatch.com.
"Doesn't suffer fools" is a title I jotted down when thinking about a title for the review of Tom Engelhardt's latest book. It calls up a personality type who has among its attributes seeing nonsense and hypocrisy and laying them to waste quickly and Engelhardt clearly has those qualities, but it also carries connotations of superiority and haughtiness, his work does not project that in any way.
It is a clear headed insightful telling of the story of where America's government has gone in the now existing creation of National Security State; the latest and complete dystopia that has developed beyond the Peoples' control and that of their elected representatives.
Those who can see what has happened are restricted from sharing the details with us for national security reasons; Engelhardt devotes a chapter to an impassioned call for insiders to breakout and do what Manning and Snowden did, reveal to the public what it needs to know about our very secrete government's actions; the legality of which is defined in secret documents we shall never be allowed to see.
Here are a few of his word on our Constitutional Law (Adjunct) Professor's role as assassin: "Mr. Obama must approve any name." (The kill list.)
"... thanks to such meetings--on what insiders have labeled "terror Tuesday"--assassination has been thoroughly institutionalized, normalized, and bureaucratized around the figure of the president. Without the help of or any oversight from the American people or their elected representatives, he alone is now responsible for regular killings thousands of miles away, including those of civilians and even children. On that score, his power is total and completely unchecked."
"...He and he alone can decide that assassinating known individuals isn't enough and that the CIA's drones can instead strike at suspicious "patterns of behavior" on the ground in Yemen or Pakistan. He can stop any attack, any killing, but there is no one, nor any mechanism, that can stop him."
Shadow Government was published before a recent investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has determined that fewer than 4 percent of drone strike casualties in Pakistan have been identified and confirmed through records as members of al-Qaeda. (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/10/16/only-4-of-drone-victims-in-pakistan-named-as-al-qaeda-members/)
`Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few corroborating details were available for those who were just described as militants. More than a third of them were not designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda - less than 4% of the total number of people killed.
These findings "demonstrate the continuing complete lack of transparency surrounding US drone operations," said Mustafa Qadri, Pakistan researcher for Amnesty International.'
Engelhardt and many like him are working to try and keep the public informed of what is happening in the hope that at some point Americans may reflect that all is not as we are told by the press agents of the Survalience Security State; that we are not aimed at security but its opposite. To be able to see ourselves as others see us .... Don't miss this book.
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- Kuriosity . K . KatReviewed in Canada on August 22, 2015
Secrets of people in power.
