Government By Assassination

HERE IS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PATRIOTIC MURDER SOCIETIES, THE ARMY GANGSTERS, THE ARMY’S IDEA OF JAPAN’S DESTINY, AND THE STRANGE ROLE OF THE EMPEROR. In Japan the army possesses a kind of autonomy which immunizes it from control by any other agency. Long ago, Mr. Byas saw that the intoxication of this immunity would lead to war, and so he spent many years ferreting out from the secretive Japanese how the militarists gained their fantastic power. His book therefore is to Japan what Rauschning’s Revolution of Nihilism was to Germany. Starting from the grass-roots of Japanese politics, it moves steadily toward the amazing disclosure of principles. At bottom, the Japanese Army is closely allied with gangsterism. The so-called patriotic societies which do its dirty work are nothing more than leagues of murderers, blackmailers, and thieves. Byas shows how these terrorists made contact years ago with certain groups of appreciative younger officers, and how consequently almost every civilian leader who curbed the army’s power was assassinated. Mr. Byas then asks what the basic program and philosophy of such a power group can be; and shows that it is aggression abroad and reaction at home. Japan was to become a war machine. 80% of its product was to go to the army, and the people were to live on the balance. The efficient planning and centralization of Marxism were to be used, but stripped of the hated component of democracy. Japan, like Germany, believes that it is a nation with a destiny, and that war pays. The furious Japanese egomania is centered in the Emperor and the notion of his divine descent. Mr. Byas therefore devotes several chapters to the hocus-pocus that surrounds this personage. He ends with a powerful and clear-headed discussion about the future.

Written by someone who spent twenty-three years as a journalist in Japan, this book describes the political and military aspirations of Japan at a tumultuous period of twentieth century history. The book examines the workings of the Japanese government and discusses the role of the military in shaping political ideals: ideals which were a compound of Marxism and National Socialism, transformed for Japanese uses and combined with fanatical racial, national and semi-religious obsessions.

The "author and his colleagues at the investigative website, The Intercept, expose stunning new details about America's secret assassination policy."--NoveList.

State-sponsored assassinations have been used by the United States since the early twentieth century and became a major tactic used by presidential administrations in the 1980s to fight drug wars in South America. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has escalated its use of targeted killing. The CIA and Pentagon have employed the controversial practice more than ever before, and President Barack Obama’s administration increased drone-targeted killing and special forces dramatically. This text looks at both the history and current use of government-sponsored assassinations, providing thoughtful analysis from multiple perspectives about the issues, politics, and ethics behind state-sponsored killing to help students think critically about the issue today.

Targets of Terror addresses the repercussions of assassination as a tactic of terrorism and delineates post-assassination political outcomes across target types. Assassination of heads of state, such as John F. Kennedy and Yitzhak Rabin, are rare events, but the political murders of police personnel, local government officials, politicians, and journalists occur frequently. These “softer” targets are often pursued during broader campaigns of terrorist violence, and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) records a significant number of these assassination events—16,246 to be exact—between 1977 and 2017. Utilizing survival analysis and the Polity IV Index to examine the span of time from a terrorist assassination to potential shifts in state political institutions, Laura N. Bell compares changes in authoritarian, mixed, and tumultuous regimes with democratic governments. She argues that these cases illuminate the extent to which the type of assassination target may or may not be linked to significant institutional change. By establishing differences in post-assassination political outcomes across regimes and targets, Bell provides a baseline study upon which to build future examinations of the types and severity of risks to governmental institutions during terror campaigns.

Full story of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, an act that exploded Europe into World War I.

A reveal of the government's secret drone warfare program.