First, some worth caveats from PDS:
[/quote]Peter Dale Scott wrote:More recently the concept of State Crimes Against Democracy, or SCADs, has been proposed by Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith, and endorsed by some of my friends in the 9/11 Truth community, including Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff. By SCADs, Prof. deHaven-Smith means "concerted actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty."
One great advantage of the SCAD hypothesis is that, unlike my own work, it has been discussed in academic journals, thus breaking a kind of sound barrier. But I have problems with the term "State Crimes." On the one hand I would claim that the State, or some segments of the state, is often the victim of deep events, as in 4/19. On the other I see the State as primarily a guarantor of democracy, not simply an enemy of it.
I agree that some government insiders play an important role in these events, indeed, I have documented some of these in the preceding pages. But I find it misleading to pin the blame for the crime on the State alone. After all, if a bank insider opens the door to a group of bank robbers, what ensues (even if you choose to call it an "inside job") is unmistakably a robbery of the bank, not by it.
SCAD analysis is far more useful and sophisticated than I can present it here, and I expect to continue to learn from those who pursue it. But it is not deep political analysis. DeHaven-Smith's list of SCADs includes "the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia," two relevant policy decisions (rather than events) that we know came from the Oval Office; although covert at the time, and very arguably illegal, they were when exposed not at all mysterious and thus essentially not very deep.
By positing SCADs as a struggle between the State on the one hand and democracy on the other, I believe this analysis oversimplifies both concepts, and underestimates (as Moyers did not) the internal contradictions within each. Democracy is after all a form of the state in which the people's freedom and power is constitutionally guaranteed by the state (or what I call the public state). And at least one of deHaven-Smith's SCADs - the JFK assassination - might more logically be considered a crime against the state, rather than by it.
Phillips and Hoff seem to recognize this difficulty: they drop the JFK assassination from their own list of SCADs. But this artificially segregates the JFK assassination from other deep events, such as the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, which I believe are parts of a common syndrome.
In short I believe in the crucial importance of a distinction that SCAD analysis does not make - between the public state that is ostensibly dedicated to fostering the welfare, rights and upward power of the people, and that residue of unofficial powers inside and outside government, or what I have awkwardly called the deep state, that for a half century has been progressively eroding that upward or persuasive power, and replacing it with unrestricted, unconstitutional power (or violence) of its own.
My final objection to SCAD analysis is practical. If the state is the author of these crimes, then the work of critics must be to mobilize public opinion against the state. This fits the libertarian politics of those who (like Alex Jones and other lovers of the Second Amendment) profoundly distrust the public US state in its entirety, and not just its covert agencies. Prof. DeHaven-Smith's own analysis implicates not just covert intelligence agencies of the US Government but the government as a whole, and perhaps particularly the courts. (In support of this indictment, he is able to point to the Supreme Court's unusual action, in 2000, of itself electing George W. Bush as president, by a vote of five to four.)
now the real meat: 911 and American Behavioral Scientist SCAD series by Joao
Abstracts:
Sense Making Under "Holographic" Conditions: Framing SCAD Research
Matthew T. Witt
University of La Verne, CA, USA, wittm@ulv.edu
Alexander Kouzmin
Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales (NSW), Australia; University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia (SA), Australia, akouzmin@scu.edu.au
The ellipses of due diligence riddling the official account of the 9/11 incidents continue being ignored by scholars of policy and public administration. This article introduces intellectual context for examining the policy heuristic "State Crimes Against Democracy" (SCAD) (deHaven-Smith, 2006) and its usefulness for better understanding patterns of state criminality of which no extant policy analytic model gives adequate account.This article then introduces papers included in this symposium examining the chimerical presence and perfidious legacy of state criminality against democracy.
Key Words: state crimes against democracy • empiricism • shock and awe • holographic state
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 783-794 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353272
Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government
Lance deHaven-Smith
Florida State University, Tallahassee, ldehavensmith@fsu.edu
This article explores the conceptual, methodological, and practical implications of research on state crimes against democracy (SCADs). In contrast to conspiracy theories, which speculate about each suspicious event in isolation, the SCAD construct delineates a general category of criminality and calls for crimes that fit this category to be examined comparatively. Using this approach, an analysis of post—World War II SCADs and suspected SCADs highlights a number of commonalities in SCAD targets, timing, and policy consequences. SCADs often appear where presidential politics and foreign policy intersect. SCADs differ from earlier forms of political corruption in that they frequently involve political, military, and/or economic elites at the very highest levels of the social and political order.The article concludes by suggesting statutory and constitutional reforms to improve SCAD prevention and detection.
Key Words: state crimes against democracy • conspiracy theory • assassinations • constitutional reform • political corruption • National Security Apparatus • criminogenic
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 795-825 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353274
Negative Information Action: Danger for Democracy
Christopher L. Hinson
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA,chris.l.hinson@gmail.com
This article explores evidence of, and provides insight into, secrecy-related information actions that are sometimes used to circumvent established government policy and law. These information actions may also be used to cover up such circumventions after the fact. To better understand secrecy as a negative information action and its impact on democracy, secrecy-related information actions are described according to methods, information technologies, and knowledge support. Negative information actions are willful and deliberate acts designed to keep government information from those in government and the public entitled to it. Negative information actions subvert the rule of law and the constitutional checks and balances. Negative information actions used by government officials to violate policies and laws during the IranContra Affair are identified, analyzed, and categorized by type. The relative impact of negative information actions on enlightened citizen understanding is demonstrated using a Negative Information Action Model by assigning a location according to type on a continuum of enlightened citizen understanding. Findings are compared with democratic theory and conspiracy doctrine.
Key Words: conspiracy doctrine • democratic theory • enlightened citizen understanding • government secrecy • group-danger rationale • information policy • negative information action • SCAD • state crimes against democracy
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 826-847 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353276
In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11
Laurie A. Manwell
University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, lmanwell@uoguelph.ca
Protecting democracy requires that the general public be educated on how people can be manipulated by government and media into forfeiting their civil liberties and duties. This article reviews research on cognitive constructs that can prevent people from processing information that challenges preexisting assumptions about government, dissent, and public discourse in democratic societies. Terror management theory and system justification theory are used to explain how preexisting beliefs can interfere with people’s examination of evidence for state crimes against democracy (SCADs), specifically in relation to the events of September 11, 2001, and the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reform strategies are proposed to motivate citizens toward increased social responsibility in a post-9/11 culture of propagandized fear, imperialism, and war.
Key Words: state crimes against democracy • terror management • system justification • government • media
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 848-884 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353279
The USA PATRIOT Acts (et al.): Convergent Legislation and Oligarchic Isomorphism in the "Politics of Fear" and State Crime(s) Against Democracy (SCADs)
Kym Thorne
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, kjthorne@senet.com.au
Alexander Kouzmin
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
The irrelevance of habeas corpus and the abolition of "double jeopardy," secret and protracted outsourcing of detention and torture, and increasing geographic prevalence of surveillance technologies across Anglo-American "democracies" have many citizens concerned about the rapidly convergent, authoritarian behavior of political oligarchs and the actual destruction of sovereignty and democratic values under the onslaught of antiterrorism hubris, propaganda, and fear. This article examines synchronic legislative isomorphism in responses to 9/11 in the United States, the United Kingdom and European Union, and Australia in terms of enacted terrorism legislation and, also, diachronic, oligarchic isomorphism in the manufacture of fear within a convergent world by comparing the "Politics of Fear" being practiced today to Stalinist—Russian and McCarthyist—U.S. abuse of "fear." The immediate future of Anglo-American democratic hubris, threats to civil society, and oligarchic threats to democratic praxis are canvassed. This article also raises the question as to whether The USA PATRIOT Acts of 2001/2006, sanctioned by the U.S. Congress, are examples, themselves, of state crimes against democracy. In the very least, any democratically inclined White House occupant in 2009 would need to commit to repealing these repressive, and counterproductive, acts.
Key Words: USA PATRIOT Act • "War on Terror," politics of fear • policy and oligarchic isomorphism • state crimes against democracy
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 885-920 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353280
Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship
Matthew T. Witt
University of La Verne, CA, USA, wittm@ulv.edu
This article opens with an inventory of how popular culture passion plays are homologous to the stampeding disenfranchisement everywhere of working classes and the emasculation of professional codes of ethics under siege by neoliberal initiatives and gambits.The article then examines a recent example of contemporary,"deconstructive" scholarly analysis and inventory of presidential "Orwellian doublespeak." The preoccupation among contemporary critical scholarship with "discourse analysis" and language gambits is criticized for displacing interrogation of real-event anomalies, as with the porous account given by the 9/11 Commission for what happened that fateful day. The article concludes by explaining how critical scholarship consistently falls short of unmasking Master Signifiers.
Key Words: neoliberalism • poststructuralism • racism • discourse analysis • 9/11 • habeas corpus • thermodynamics
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, 921-939 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209353281
And links to readable copies:
Joao » Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:55 pm wrote:It's been 3.5 years since the OP, but these recently fell off a truck:See also elfismiles' thread "Latest MSM Crack at 'Conspiracy Theory'" for some additional discussion of SCADs (starting at the bottom of the first page).
- In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11
- Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship
- Sense Making Under "Holographic" Conditions: Framing SCAD Research
- Negative Information Action: Danger for Democracy
- The USA PATRIOT Acts (et al.): Convergent Legislation and Oligarchic Isomorphism in the “Politics of Fear” and State Crime(s) Against Democracy (SCADs)
- Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government