Now, this organization purportedly was founded in 2000 – well before the 9/11 attacks. And their program is stuff nobody, but nobody, says out loud in American politics. This stuff is shockingly authoritarian even by John Ashcroft’s standards. I immediately wished to know more – who are these people? Where do they come from? Who funds their think-tank? Who uses their services? Do they have any influence with anyone in government? What kind of “subversive” or “anti-American” threats are they mainly concerned with? Islamic terrorists? American right-wing terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and the militia groups? American left-wing . . . well, there haven’t been any left-wing “terrorists” in this country since the Weather Underground and the SLA, but maybe these people regard even the Greens or the Democratic Socialists of America or, for all I know, Howard Dean as dangerous to society. From the article, there’s no way to tell.
But I can’t seem to find out more. Unlike practically every other think-tank listed, the article on this one does not provide a link to their website, nor does it name any of their officers, members or employees, nor does it provide any contact information, not even in what city the organization is based. I tried a couple of different search engines and could find nothing about CNAS on the Internet. Does this organization actually exist, or is this an elaborate woosh that none of the Wikipedia editors have caught yet?
Sounds like a spinoff of the Project for a New American Century. Could be a Wiki-woosh, though as the several sites I found describing the organization all contain text similar to the wiki article, it is definitely more than just a bad encyclopedia entry.
Just a bit of googling on “Coalition for a New American Society”. There’s nothing very exciting, like a link to the organizations web page. Perhaps they feel the internet is counter-american?
All theWeb also returns a few hits; again nothing exciting. If this outfit exists, they’re keeping their heads down.
That’s one of the problems with Wikipedia. It can be a good source of info, but, also, anyone can put any information they want on there, whether it’s true or not.
I get 19 hits for “Coalition for a New American Society”. Maybe the Wiki article was a plant by CNAS that infected your computer with a virus which prevents you finding any further info on them?
As far as I can tell CNAS has no web site.
The reason I said the board was open – one of those pages you can’t get from google I looked at and there was link as if you could discover who the board members were. . .the page was no longer available.
The other sites I looked at, most of the 19, were either the same article or the name was simply on a list with a heading like “newly formed” or “well known” think tanks.
And then people like us find out and fix the problem. There’s a better chance of Wikipedia getting repaired than Britannica.
I’ve kicked this article over to everyone else on Wikipedia and see what the argument over there kicks up. If this is bunk, it should be deleted and all back-references destroyed.
