GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY
Self-serving leaders
throughout the world increasingly assume power with the goal of
becoming rich at the expense of the majority of their population,
and of the commonweal.
Dictators and oligarchs,
presidents and prime ministers, bankers and corporate CEOs, intellectuals
and technocrats, and assorted enablers and sycophants, are stealing
their nations' wealth, and laughing all the way to their off-shore
tax havens.
The endgame of this
plunder will be obscene riches for the plutocratic minority and
immiseration and oppression of the majority.
Now more than ever,
it is critical to understand the nature of the global neoliberal
economic system and the kleptocrats who thrive on it, and to give
serious thought to survival options in a world increasingly controlled
by and run for the benefit of thieves.
INSTITUTIONS OF GLOBAL
POWER
CENTRAL BANKS
BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS
FEDERAL RESERVE
BANK OF ENGLAND
CENTRAL BANKS OF MOST NATIONS
GLOBAL BANKING CONGLOMERATES
THE 25 LARGEST BANKS
IN THE WORLD (2012)
HSBC
BNP PARABIS
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BANK OF CHINA
MITUBISHI
CREDIT AGRICOLE
BARCLAYS GROUP
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND
JPMORGAN CHASE
BANK OF AMERICA
CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK
MIZUHO FINANCIAL GROUP
BANK OF CHINA
CITIGROUP
AGRICULTURAL BANK OF CHINA
ING GROUP
BANCO SANTANDER
SUMITOMO MITSUI FINANCIAL GROUP
SOCIETE GENERALE
UBS
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP
GROUP BCPE
WELLS FARGO
UNICREDIT
CREDIT SUISSE
DEUTSCHE BANK
TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS
THE 25 CORPORATIONS
WITH THE GREATEST GLOBAL IMPACT (2011)
1 - BARCLAYS PLC - GREAT BRITIAN
2 - CAPITAL GROUP COMPANIES INC. - UNITED STATES
3 - FMR CORP (Fidelity Management) - UNITED STATES
4 - AXA FR 6712 - SWITZERLAND
5 - STATE STREET CORPORATION - UNITED STATES
6 - JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. - UNITED STATES
7 - LEGAL & GENERAL GROUP PLC - GREAT BRITAIN
8 - VANGUARD GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
9- UBS AG - SWITZERLAND S
10 - MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC. - UNITED STATES
11 - WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT CO. L.L.P. - UNITED STATES
12 - DEUTSCHE BANK AG - GERMANY
13 - FRANKLIN RESOURCES, INC. - UNITED STATES
14 - CREDIT SUISSE GROUP - SWITZERLAND
15 - WALTON ENTERPRISES LLC - UNITED STATES
16 - BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP. - UNITED STATES
17 - NATIXIS - FRANCE
18 - GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
19 - T. ROWE PRICE GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
20- LEGG MASON, INC. - UNITED STATES
21 - MORGAN STANLEY - UNITED STATES
22 - MITSUBISHI UFJ FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. - JAPAN
23 - NORTHERN TRUST CORPORATION - UNITED STATES
24 - SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE - FRANCE
25 - BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION - UNITED STATES
ENERGY CORPORATIONS
(a partial list)
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL
CHEVRON
BRITISH PETROLEUM
EXXON/MOBIL
TOTAL
CONOCO PHILLIPS
WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS
(a partial list)
LOCKHEED MARTIN - USA
BOEING - USA
BAE SYSTEMS - BRITAIN
GENERAL DYNAMICS - USA
RAYTHEON - USA
NORTHROP GRUMMAN - USA
EADS - BRITAIN/FRANCE
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS - USA
FINMECCANICA - ITALY
UNITED TECHNOLOGIES - USA
FINANCIAL SERVICES
INSTITUTIONS
LARGEST HOLDING COMPANIES
(2013)
JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION
CITIGROUP INC.
WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC.
MORGAN STANLEY
GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION
LARGEST ASSET MANAGEMENT
COMPANIES (2012)
BLACKROCK
UBS
ALLIANZ
VANGUARD GROUP
STATE STREET GLOBAL ADVISORS
PIMCO
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS
AXA
JP MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
CREDIT SUISSE
LARGEST HEDGE FUNDS
(2011)
BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES
MAN GROUP
J.P. MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
BREVAN HOWARD ASSET MANAGEMENT
OCH-ZIFF CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GROUP
PAULSON AND CO.
BLACKROCK ADVISORS
ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIETIES
AND CLUBS
(a partial list)
UNITED NATIONS
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)
WORLD BANK
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)
TRILATERAL COMMISSION (TC)
BILDERBERG GROUP
CHATHAM HOUSE / ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (RIIA)
CLUB OF THE ISLES
PILGRIMS SOCIETY
CLUB OF ROME
THINK TANKS
(a partial list)
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES (CSIS)
BUSINESS ROUND TABLE
EUROPEAN ROUND TABLE OF INDUSTRIALISTS (ERT)
INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (ICC)
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (WBCSD)
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
RAND CORPORATION
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS
(a partial list)
ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
FORD FOUNDATION
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT
GATES FOUNDATION
SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION
TAX HAVENS, SECRECY
JURISDICTIONS AND MONEY LAUNDERING CENTERS
HIDING THE WEALTH
OF THE RICH AND INFAMOUS
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE "HIDDEN"
IN OFFSHORE SECRECY JURISDICTIONS
WEALTH OF THE GLOBAL ELITE IS PRESERVED
TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AVOID PAYING TAXES
DRUG MONEY IS LAUNDERED THROUGH INTERNATIONAL BANKS
FUNDING OF GOVERNMENT COVERT OPERATIONS IS OBSCURE
CITY OF LONDON
"City of London" is the secrecy jurisdiction of choice
for the global mega-wealthy
both directly and from Britain's overseas territories and crown
dependencies
WALL STREET (NEW YORK CITY)
DELAWARE
NEVADA
FLORIDA
WYOMING
SOUTH DAKOTA
HONG KONG
MACAO
THE VATICAN
COUNTRIES
UNITED STATES
BRITAIN
PANAMA
SINGAPORE
TAIWAN
MALAYSIA
JAPAN
CHINA
BELIZE
ISRAEL
LEBANON
TURKEY
CYPRUS
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (DUBAI)
BAHRAIN
SWITZERLAND
GERMANY
LUXEMBOURG
MONACO
ANDORRA
LIECHTENSTEIN
NETHERLANDS
IRELAND
KENYA
MAURITIUS
SEYCHELLES
NUE
SAMOA
MARSHALL ISLANDS
TERRITORIES AND ISLANDS UNDER
BRITISH INFLUENCE
Britain's overseas territories and
crown dependencies funnel
trillions of dollars of laundered money from around the world
into London banks and real estate
GIBRALTAR
GUERNSEY
JERSEY
ISLE OF MAN
CAYMAN ISLAND
ANGUILLA
BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
BAHAMAS
MONSERRAT
BERMUDA
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BARBADOS
DOMINICA
GRENADA
ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
ST. LUCIA
ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
TURKS AND CAICOS
ISLANDS UNDER NETHERLANDS INFLUENCE
ARUBA
BONAIRE
CURAÇAO
ST. MAARTEN
NETHERLAND ANTILLES
MONEY LAUNDERING BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
{a partial list}
BANK OF AMERICA
JP MORGAN CHASE
CITIBANK
WELLS FARGO
WESTERN UNION
AMERICAN EXPRESS
CREDIT SUISSE
UBS
HSBC
STANDARD CHARTERED
BARCLAYS
LLOYDS OF LONDON
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND
AND MANY OTHER BANKS AND FINANCIAL
INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD
DYNASTIC FAMILIES
AND INSTITUTIONS
EUROPEAN DYNASTIC
FAMILIES
HOUSE OF WINDSOR (Great Britain)
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
LIECHTENSTEIN
LUXEMBOURG
SPAIN
DENMARK
NORWAY
SWEDEN
MONACO
INTERNATIONAL BANKING DYNASTIES
ROTHSCHILDS
ROCKEFELLERS
KUHN LOEB
WARBURG
LAZARD
GOLDMAN SACHS
ISRAEL MOSES SEIF
LEHMAN
DYNASTIC BANKING INSTITUTIONS
ROTHSCHILD BANK OF LONDON
ROTHSCHILD BANK OF BERLIN
WARBURG BANK OF HAMBURG
WARBURG BANK OF AMSTERDAM
LAZARD BROTHERS OF PARIS
ISRAEL MOSES SEIF BANK OF ITALY
KUHN LOEB BANK OF NEW YORK
GOLDMAN SACHS OF NEW YORK
J. P. MORGAN CHASE BANK OF NEW YORK
LEHMAN BROTHERS OF NEW YORK (filed for bankruptcy in 2008)
THE CITY OF LONDON
CORPORATION
THE "CROWN", THE "CITY",
THE "SQUARE MILE"
THE VATICAN
VATICAN BANK
DYNASTIC FAMILIES
IN THE UNITED STATES
(a partial list)
ROCKEFELLER
BUSH
CLINTON
DYNASTIC FAMILIES
IN ASIA
(a partial list)
BRUNEI
PHILIPPINES
CHINA (PRINCELINGS)
DYNASTIC FAMILIES
IN MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
(a partial list)
SYRIA
JORDAN
MOROCCO
SAUDI ARABIA
KUWAIT
OMAN
QATAR
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (UAE)
BAHRAIN
WEBSITES TO VISIT
MEET THE KLEPTOCRATS
"Where you have a concentration
of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality
of gangsters get control."
English historian Lord Acton
"Kleptocrats have transformed
politics to trade. They are traders who use their power, access
and privileged information to generate wealth. And at the same
time well-connected financiers and corporate leaders have made
a business of politics. They come together to form a kleptocratic
caste."
venitism.blogspot.com
"Families that have established
modern dynasties typically rose to prominence through their concentration
of power and wealth in financial, industrial and corporate spheres.
From these positions, political power and influence became a necessity,
or else the loss of economic power would be an inevitability."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Oxfam said wealth was
being concentrated in the hands of increasingly fewer people,
while the world's poorest continued to get poorer. In 2010 some
388 people owned as much as the world's poorest 50 percent."
www.aljazeera.com, 2016
"There is a group of a
few thousand people among the corporate elite who effectively
control perhaps $100 trillion, two-thirds of the world's total
assets."
David Rothkopf
"These are the men who,
without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their
country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition
adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from
their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure
to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from
a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest."
Samuel Johnson
"The Global Mafiocracy:
the banks, corporations, asset management firms, sovereign wealth
funds, insurance companies and holding companies that collectively
own each other and the wider network of global corporate and financial
institutions, manifesting as a relatively small cartel of roughly
150 large financial institutions that wield unparalleled financial
power in the modern world.
Behind the major corporate and financial institutions are individuals
and families, smaller units of concentrated power who own the
largest shares and steer the operations of the global cartel.
These individual oligarchs and family dynasties - from the Rockefellers
in the US, to the Wallenbergs in Sweden, Agnellis in Italy, Desmarais'
in Canada, to the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, Oppenheimer in
South Africa, among others - control and/or influence large percentages
of wealth within their respective nations and in the world of
globalized financial and corporate networks."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The war against a foreign
country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going
to profit from it."
George Orwell
"Corporate raiders (now
called private equity and hedge fund managers) buy up firms using
borrowed money and make the acquired corporation pay back the
loans. For pulling off the deal, they use some of that borrowed
money to pay themselves enormous fees, right off the top. They
also provide fat bonuses for the CEOs who are to run the acquired
corporation. Most importantly, they change the way top officers
are rewarded. From this point on, most of their incomes would
derive from stock options. The more the stock price rose, the
more the CEOs would pocket.
As a result, the new incentive would be focused solely on making
the firm's stock price climb. Nothing else mattered. How do you
do that? You use as much of the profits as possible to buy up
your own stocks! And when profits are slim, you borrow more money
to buy even more of your own stock. The more you buy, the fewer
shares are in circulation, and therefore each share is worth more.
The stock price climbs. Buying back your own stock became the
new corporate way of life."
Les Leopold
"I spent thirty-three years
in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man
for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I
was a racketeer for capitalism.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house
of Brown Brothers in 1910-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially
Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light
to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City
[Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half
a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
In China in 1927 l helped to see to it that Standard Oil went
its way unmolested.
I had a swell racket. l was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions.
l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do
was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated
on three continents."
General Smedley Butler, former
US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935
"The neoconservative aim is
to change the shape of the trajectory along which Western civilization
has been moving for the past two centuries. It is nothing less
than to roll back Social Security, health care and pensions for
labor, health care, education and other public spending, to dismantle
the social welfare state, the Progressive Era of genuine democracy
and ultimately even the very concept of classical liberalism."
sceptic.ca
"With the preservation
and propagation of modern dynastic power has come the preservation
and propagation of modern imperialism, no longer established as
a formal colonial system of control. Instead, it is represented
as a complex inter-dependency and interaction of institutions
and ideologies that manifest as a system of globalized 'informal
imperialism', with the United States at the center.
Some of the names of these dynasties are better known than others,
like Rothschild and Rockefeller, while others are better known
within their own countries or barely known at all, like Agnelli
(in Italy), Wallenberg (in Sweden) and Desmarais (in Canada).
Each family dynasty has their own unique history, with power concentrated
in particular companies or family offices. Many, if not most,
of these families also have significant connections with each
other, acting as joint shareholders in various companies, sitting
on the same boards and mingling in the same social circles. They
cooperate and they compete with each other for influence in Globalization's
'Game of Thrones'."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"By 2008-'09 corporate
America was, in effect, using 75% of its profits to buy back its
own stock. At the same time, loan and after loan was piled onto
the corporate books to buy up even more stock. So that after buying
the stock and paying off the loans, there was very little profit
remaining to reinvest in the company.
To play this game, worker wages, R&D and new plant and equipment
are cut to the bone. Older plants are eliminated. Production is
outsourced to low-wage areas. Temporary workers replace permanent
employees. Benefits like healthcare and pensions are reduced or
eliminated. Unions are undermined. And bankruptcy is sometimes
used to break contracts to further reduce these costs. The fees
for all this "financial engineering" go to Wall Street.
The stock-option-loaded CEOs become part of Wall Street-its onsite,
wealth extraction overseers. Nearly all corporations whether raided
or not, soon followed this lucrative model. Strip-mining the corporation
became its fundamental activity."
Les Leopold
GOVERNMENT KLEPTOCRATS
Pres. Barack Obama / VP Al Gore
/ Pres. Bill Clinton / Sen. Phil Gramm / Gen. David Petraeus
"The Clintons suffer from
being snobs who like to hang around with rich people in spite
of their populist pretensions. They are the ultimate social climbers,
always willing to do one more thing to obtain acceptance from
the 1% that really matters and ready to reap the rewards that
they know come with it. Hillary claims that she and Bill were
broke and in debt when they left the White House. They are now
worth over $100 million and command as much as $800,000 for a
single speaking engagement. Hillary's minimum paycheck to speak
before a group is reported to be $200,000. Does anyone actually
think that either Bill Clinton's sly smile or Hillary's shrill
monotone is worth a speaking fee in the hundreds of thousands
of dollars? Or are there expectations of other quid pro quos down
the road for those who are coughing up the big money, to include
something like $18 million from Goldman Sachs and other banksters
who brought the nation to the brink of ruin in 2008?"
Philip Giraldi
"Bill and Hillary Clinton
have in tandem made enormous sums of money since Bill left the
White House. According to the Washington Post, they netted at
least $136.5 million between 2001 and 2012."
Ken Silverstein
"Though an overwhelming
majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls, believe
that human rights should be a cornerstone of American foreign
policy, Senator Hillary Clinton has repeatedly prioritized the
profits of American arms manufacturers and the extension of Washington's
hegemonic reach in parts of the world."
Stephen Zunes
"President Bill Clinton
saw in the earthquake of 2010 his opportunity to become the new
US High Commissioner of Haiti. Within four months of the earthquake,
he formed the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti
(CIRH): a strictly pay-to-play group of officials/rich businessmen
from the MINUSTAH countries and others who agreed to contribute
armed personnel from their countries or money in return for a
piece of the action in Haiti. After some arm twisting and bribery,
the Haitian parliament was forced to declare a state of emergency
for 18 months during which Clinton and his CIRH gang could do
as they pleased with regard to reconstruction, without risk of
liability. One year and a half came and went, and when the Haitian
Senate observed that nothing much had been accomplished, the state
of emergency was not renewed, and the CIRH was alleged to be fraudulent."
Dady Chery, 2014
"President Bill Clinton
and other recent White House tenants condemned Haiti to a future
of endemic poverty through a self-serving U.S. rice export policy."
a report from the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, 2010
"The American kleptocracy
continues to suck the American people down a rabbit hole, into
a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless,
the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless
to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie,
plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness
on everyone and everything in their sphere."
John Whitehead, 2018
"Up to $300 million has
been raised by Bill and Hillary Clinton from the financial-services
industry.
Goldman Sachs has donated between $250,000 and $500,00 to the
monprofit Clinton Foundation and hosts many of its events.
The Nation magazine
"I am delighted to be here
in these new Council on Foreign Relations headquarters. I have
been often to the mother ship in New York City, but it's good
to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from
the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't
have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we
should think about the future."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
opening remarks during her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
, July 15, 2009
"According to a CNBC Millionaire
Survey in 2014 (500 people with investable assets of $1 million
or more, which represents the top 8 percent of American households),
Hillary Clinton is the top choice for 31 percent of millionaires.
Clinton gets the support of 38 percent of women millionaires and
27 percent of male millionaires. Among male millionaires of both
parties, Hillary is the top choice, with 27 percent."
Robert Frank
"As part of the country's
"Reconstruction", the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund invested
$2 million in the Royal Oasis Hotel, a deluxe structure to be
built in a poverty-stricken metropolitan area filled with displaced-persons
camps housing hundreds of thousands of Haitians."
Julie Lévesque, 2012
"Since 2009, George W.
Bush has made upwards of $15 million giving speeches, sometimes
for as much as $200,000 a pop.
W's very first speaking gig after leaving the White House, in
October 2009, was a star-studded affair at the Ft. Worth Convention
Center. Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Christian motivational
speaker Zig Ziglar addressed the crowd, too. The sponsor was an
outfit called Get Motivated!
In other words, the 43rd president was making six-digit figures
shilling for "get rich quick" schemes."
Joseph L. Flatley
"The Clintons have used
their foundation [Clinton Foundation] for crass profiteering and
influence peddling.
If the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies do their
jobs, the foundation will be closed and its current and past trustees,
who include Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, will be indicted.
That's because their so-called charitable enterprise has served
as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich Clinton family friends."
Ken Silverstein
"I am delighted to be here
in these new [Council on Foreign Relations] headquarters. I have
been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but
it's good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the
street from the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't
have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we
should think about the future."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
opening remarks during her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
, July 15, 2009
"Vice-president Cheney
denied that he had any ties with Halliburton Company after he
left his position as CEO of the company in 2000, but an investigation
by the Congressional Research Service revealed that while Vice
President, Cheney received deferred compensation from Halliburton
to the tune of $500,000 to $1,000,000. While Cheney was Secretary
of Defense for George H. W. Bush, the Pentagon contracted Halliburton
subsidiary Brown & Root to study the cost effectiveness of
outsourcing some military operations to private contractors. Based
on the results of the study, the Pentagon hired Brown & Root
to implement an outsourcing plan."
www.sourcewatch.org
"Al Gore, a career reportedly
became a billionaire just a few years after leaving his last government
job as Vice President of the United States. He achieved this miracle
through various "green" business deals. Such deals usually
involve the ancient mercantilist practice of bribing politicians
for a special favor or subsidy. The bribe-giver becomes wealthy,
and the politicians granting the favor/subsidy have the funds
to finance the next campaign. Let's call it crony environmentalism."
Lew Rockwell
"Al Gore stands to benefit
to the tune of billions of dollars if the carbon tax proposals
he is pushing come to fruition in the United States.
... The former Vice President is poised to become the world's
first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government
policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to
the business ventures he has invested in.
... Since he left office, Gore's personal net worth has skyrocketed
on the back of his advocacy for global warming issues and the
financial dividends this has reaped.
... The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's pre-eminent
carbon credit trading market, has direct ties to Al Gore and Maurice
Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement
to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for
profit and social engineering. Gore's investment company, Generation
Investment Management, which sells carbon offset opportunities,
is the largest shareholder of CCX."
Paul Joseph Watson, 2009
"As the first president
of the new global era, Bill Clinton visited more than 70 countries,
set up the WTO, boosted the international budget, maintained high
levels of Pentagon spending, militarized the drug wars in South
America, continued the military and economic assault on Iraq,
laid the groundwork for "humanitarian" interventions,
bombed the Sudan and Afghanistan, and carried out protracted aerial
raids on Serbia. Enthused by prospects for total surveillance
of the world, Clinton raised intelligence spending levels to more
than 30 billion dollars, with increasing emphasis on the supersecret
National Security Agency. The planned, systematic, and brutal
destruction of the Serb infrastructure must be considered one
of the great war crimes of the postwar years."
Carl Boggs
"The Clinton's are singular
in terms of both their greed and their hubristic sense of entitlement...
Bill has made at least $136.5 million, mostly from speaking engagements,
between 2001 and 2012, and Hillary is now earning even more than
he is per speech... The Clinton Foundation, administered separately
from their private wealth, had assets totaling nearly $278 million
at the end of 2013."
Philip Giraldi
"President Bill Clinton
and his cronies had begun to search for a way to continue their
economic stranglehold on Haiti, and this would include a suitable
Haitian President: specifically, one who would be popular with
the young but lack patriotism. They found their man in the musician
Michel Martelly."
Dady Chery, 2014
"Al Gore, former U.S. vice
president and Current TV founder reportedly made an estimated
$70 million for his 20 percent stake when he sold his progressive
cable network to Al Jazeera.
Gore sold Current TV in January 2013 for a reported $500 million.
He also exercised shares of Apple stock - which netted him $30
million - two weeks later. His net worth is an estimated $200
million."
www.huffingtonpost.com, 2013
"Since her first Senate
campaign in 1999, Goldman Sachs has been bankrolling Hillary Clinton
to the tune of millions of dollars. Individual donors like Goldman
CEO Lloyd Blankfein have been generous, but the firm has sought
to purchase influence and good will through speaking fees as well
as contributions to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation.
Goldman Sachs is not alone. Citigroup ranks No. 1 in lifetime
donations to Clinton.
Hiring Hillary Clinton as a speaker is one way Goldman Sachs funnels
cash to her. Clinton's standard speaking fee is $200,000."
The Nation magazine
"The Clinton Foundation
has received more than $1 billion over the years to purchase HIV/AIDS
drugs for poor people in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. However,
a unit set up to receive the money-the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS
Initiative, Inc., which was run by Ira Magaziner, a Clinton administration
veteran with close ties to Hillary-clearly spent far, far less
than it took in. In fact, the unit's accounting practices were
so shoddy that its license was revoked by the state of Massachusetts."
Ken Silverstein
"The North American Free
Trade Agreement [NAFTA] was peddled by the Clinton White House
as an opportunity to raise the incomes and prosperity of the citizens
of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA would also, we
were told, stanch Mexican immigration into the United States.
... But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, had the effect of reversing
every one of Clinton's rosy predictions. Once the Mexican government
lifted price supports on corn and beans grown by Mexican farmers,
those farmers had to compete against the huge agribusinesses in
the United States. Many Mexican farmers were swiftly bankrupted.
At least 2 million Mexican farmers have been driven off their
land since 1994.
... NAFTA was great if you were a corporation. It was a disaster
if you were a worker.
... Bill Clinton's welfare reform bill, signed on August 22, 1996,
obliterated the nation's social safety net. It threw 6 million
people, many of them single mothers, off the welfare rolls within
three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care,
rent subsidies, or continued Medicaid coverage.
... Clinton slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year
period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid funding.
... The Clinton administration, led by Lawrence Summers, signed
into law the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which
ripped down the firewalls that had been established by the 1933
GlassSteagall Act. Glass-Steagall established the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation. It set in place banking reforms to stop
speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall
demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Clinton,
tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators."
Chris Hedges
"The technique, used by
the monopolists to gouge society, was set forth in the early twentieth
century by Frederick C. Howe in 'Confessions of a Monopolist'.
First, says Howe, politics is a necessary part of business. To
control industries it is necessary to control Congress and the
regulators and thus make society go to work for you, the monopolist.
So, according to Howe, the two principles of a successful monopolist
are first to let Society work for you; and second to make a business
of politics."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"
"Regimes throughout the
Middle East, from Turkey to the United Arab Emirates, have gone
on what appears to be a shopping spree for former members of Congress.
Compared to the rest of the world, Middle East governments have
accounted for more than fifty percent of the latest revolving
door hires for former lawmakers during this time period."
Mike Krieger, 2015
"The Project on Government
Oversight identified 224 high ranking government officials who
moved through the revolving door to become lobbyists or high level
executives of government contractors, and disclosed that at least
two-thirds of the former members of Congress who lobbied for top
20 government contractors served on authorization or appropriations
committees that approved programs or funds for their future employer
or client while they served in Congress."
Jeremy Kuzmarov, Global Research,
2014
"Ex-congressman and GOP
strategist Vin Weber and his lobbying firm, Mercury LLC, signed
a lucrative lobbying contract with the Gulf State of Qatar,receiving
a $465,000 advance."
VICE magazine, 2014
"The conventional wisdom
out there is that businesses are going to Washington, writing
checks and expecting big returns. But the other side of the story
is that members of Congress may implicitly threaten businesses
that if they don't change their policy, or if they are not heavily
involved in the political process, that bad things might happen
to them.
... Our government has become a clearing house for corporations
and plutocrats whose dollars grease the wheels for lucrative contracts
and easy regulation."
political scientist David Primo
"Billy Tauzin, former chair
of the the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had oversight
of the drug industry, after retiring from Congress in late 2004,
became the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers
of America in January 2005."
www.sourcewatch.org
"Our public coffers being
emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions
working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums
of money to, the representatives of "the people" - kleptocracy
on a scale to dazzle."
William J. Astore
"In the late 1990s, Senator
Phil Gramm, as chairman of the Senate Baking Committee, spearheaded
the repeal of Glass-Steagall for the banks. As soon as it was
done, he was made vice chairman of one of the largest international
banks - Swiss global financial services company UBS AG - and paid
a multi-million dollar income, and his only duties were to go
around giving speeches."
Paul Craig Roberts
"Full investigation of
the Enron scandal would have proven once and for all that there
is almost no one in the US Congress not owned by some corporation."
T. P. Wilkinson
"The two party system is
nothing but a ruse designed to keep the people believing they
have a say in how things are run in this country. Both parties
support the military industrial complex. Both parties support
the militarization of police forces around the country. Both parties
support the mass surveillance of its citizens. Both parties do
the bidding of their rich corporate and special interest benefactors.
Both parties favor deficit spending for eternity. Both parties
believe the government should expand its role in our everyday
lives. Both parties do the bidding for and protect the Wall Street
interests who really run this country. No more proof is needed
than what has occurred over the last five years, as criminal Wall
Street bankers were rewarded for their malfeasance with trillions
of dollars from taxpayers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve.
While we were allowing ourselves to be distracted, amused, entertained,
and indebted, the oligarchs were busy conducting a silent coup."
www.washingtonsblog.com, 2014
"Former US Senator Norm
Coleman is a lobbyist who serves on the board of the Republican
Jewish Coalition. Since July, Coleman has been a registered lobbyist
for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hired in part to work on sanctions
against Iran, a key priority of Saudi Arabia's ruling family.
Shortly after signing up as a lobbyist for the Saudis, Coleman
gave a speech on Capitol Hill imploring his congressional allies
to realize that Israel and Saudi Arabia have many shared policy
priorities, and that the United States should be hand in glove
with our allies in the region.
Mike Krieger, 2015
"Once upon a time the GOP
stood for Grand Old Party - now it stands for Guardians of Privilege,
and this is payback time for everything from fracking to getting
the big banks off the hook; from doing away with the minimum wage
and coddling off-shore corporate tax avoiders to privatizing Medicare
and Social Security; to gutting the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, even the U.S. Postal
Service.
Democrats are so compromised by their own addiction to Big Money
they have forgotten their history as champion of the working stiff,
the little folks down there at the bottom. The great problems
facing everyday people in America - inequality, stagnant wages,
children in poverty, our degraded infrastructure and stressed
environment - are not being seriously addressed because the political
class is afraid to offend the people who write the checks - the
corporations and the rich. Everyone else can be safely ignored."
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
"Monopolists never can
be free-enterprise capitalists. Without exception, they embrace
either socialism or some other form of collectivism, because these
represent the ultimate monopoly. These government-sponsored monopolies
are tolerated by their citizens because they assume that, by the
magic of the democratic process and the power of their vote, somehow,
it is they who are the benefactors. This might be true if they
took the trouble to become informed on such matters, and if they
had independent and honest candidates from which to choose, and
if the political parties were not dominated by the super-rich,
and if it were possible for men to win elections without vast
sums of campaign money."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"From 2007 to 2012, the
200 most politically active corporations in the United States
spent almost $6 billion for lobbying and campaign contributions.
And they received more than $4 trillion in U.S. government contracts
and other forms of assistance. That's $760 for every dollar spent
on influence, a stunning return on investment."
Sunlight Foundation, www.blacklistednews.com
"Our government has become
a clearing house for corporations and plutocrats whose dollars
grease the wheels for lucrative contracts and easy regulation."
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
"The best of all business
is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax
exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since
it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for
its exploitation."
Frederick C. Howe. "Confessions
of a Monopolist" (1906)
"Government becomes the
tool of the very forces that, supposedly, it is regulating. The
regulations,
upon close examination, almost always turn out to be what the
cartels have agreed upon beforehand, except that now they have
the police power of the state to enforce them. And it makes it
possible for these financial and political interests to become
secure from the threat of competition."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"Former Michigan Representative
Pete Hoekstra, who used to chair the House Intelligence Committee,
appears regularly in the media to demand that the US increase
its arms assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq. Hoekstra has
not disclosed that he has worked as a paid representative of the
Kurdistan Regional Government."
Mike Krieger, 2015
"Between 2007 and 2012,
200 of America's most politically active corporations spent a
combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions.
What they gave pales compared to what those same corporations
got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support."
Sunlight Foundation study, www.blacklistednews.com
"The 2010 Citizens United
Supreme Court case essentially enabled corporations and billionaires
to be able buy US elections and politicians without government
oversight... Rather than creating a level playing field, Citizens
United gives disproportionate power to corporations and elites
to decide elections. Meanwhile, most voters are left disempowered
on the sidelines, pawns in elections that are largely fueled by
clandestine corporate money."
Benjamin Dangl
"The rule of law in the
U.S. has been divided into two branches: one in name only for
the financial Elites and corporate cartels, and one for the rest
of us mere citizens. Between corporate toadies on the Supreme
Court who have granted corporations rights to spend unlimited
money lobbying and buying legislators as a form of "free
speech" ... The U.S. legal system is now a perfection of
kleptocracy."
Charles Hugh Smith
"[The Supreme Court 'Citizen
United' decision allowing unlimited money in politics] violates
the essence of what made America a great country in its political
system. Now it's just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery
being the essence of getting the nominations for president or
to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors
and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen
a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major
contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for
themselves after the election's over. The incumbents, Democrats
and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit
to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot
more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a
challenger."
former President Jimmy Carter,
Thom Hartmann Show, July 2015
"In its Citizens United
decision, the U.S. Supreme Court took for granted that "favoritism
and influence" are inherent in electoral democracy and that
"democracy is premised on responsiveness" of politicians
to those who support them."
Sunlight Foundation study, www.blacklistednews.com
"The Supreme Court's Citizens
United decision opened the floodgates for corporate money to enter
Washington. Campaign spending in the 2012 elections was unprecedented,
totaling an astounding $6.3 billion, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics. Spending on the 2014 elections, at $4 billion,
made it the most expensive midterm election in history.
In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled in their
majority decision that corporate spending on federal elections
would not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."
A Sunlight Foundation (a government accountability group) study
tested the Supreme Court's conclusion and instead found that political
spending is just about the best investment a company can make
in America.
Of the 200 companies studied, the report identified 29 companies
that received 1,000 times more federal money than they spent on
campaign contributions and political lobbying."
Alex Ellefson
"Under the 2010 Supreme
Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations now have few restrictions
on campaign financing. Individuals and political action committees
associated with the defense sector contributed more than $27 million
to political candidates during the 2012 campaign cycle, with far
more going to Republicans than Democrats: $16.4 million versus
$11 million. In that year, DynCorp gave over $300,000 to Super
PACs, 52 percent to Republicans, and CACI $137,000 to Republicans
compared to $21,000 for Democrats."
Jeremy Kuzmarov, 2014
"The legal system in the
United States no longer functions to protect ordinary Americans.
It serves our oligarchic, corporate elites. These elites have
committed $26 billion in financial fraud. They loot the U.S. Treasury,
escape taxation, drive down wages, break unions, pillage pension
funds, gut regulation and oversight, destroy public institutions
including public schools and social assistance programs, wage
endless and illegal wars to swell the profits of arms merchants,
and authorize police to murder unarmed black men."
Chris Hedges
"Major trade groups that
can now play an unlimited role in influencing elections, thanks
to the Citizens United ruling, receive direct funds from corporations
headquartered in foreign lands."
Mike Krieger
"By the end of the nineteenth
century, the U.S. courts had declared that corporations were to
be considered persons under the law - and then used this legal
fiction of "personhood" to extend constitutional protections
to corporations. The courts have ruled that corporate advertising
and political campaign contributions are to be protected as free
speech."
George Draffan
"Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas worked as a lawyer for Monsanto for four years.
As a Supreme Court Justice he has ruled in favor of Monsanto every
time."
www.herinst.org
"The appearance of influence
or access of corporations will not cause the electorate to lose
faith in our democracy."
United States Supreme Court "Citizen
United" ruling
"Court rulings - most famously
the Citizens United case in 2010 - have long meant that any laws
attempting to stop billionaires from buying elections were already
a lost cause. The Robert's Supreme Court has held that - even
in a time with record levels of income inequality - money is just
a form of free speech."
www.philly.com
"On December 10th, Wall
Street's federal appeals court, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals,
ruled that if inside information about what is going to happen
to a corporation is taken advantage of by an investor, it's okay,
so long as the source of the inside-tip isn't directly paid for
passing it along.
... This ruling establishes two classes of investors: one is insiders
who trade favors but don't pay each other for providing inside
tips, they instead do it instead like members of a club; the other
is suckers who rely on the fairness of America's investment markets
and on the Government's enforcement against corruption of the
investment markets."
Eric Zuesse, 2014
"The flood of dark money
unleashed by the 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission
decision and certified by the United States Supreme Court prohibited
the government from restricting campaign contributions by nonprofit
corporations and other independent groups.
Since then, special interest groups have significantly increased
their targeting of judicial campaigns in the United States. Groups
such as the Americans for Prosperity and the Center for Individual
Rights - which are funded by conservative billionaires Charles
and David Koch have committed unprecedented sums to influence
state judicial elections, including a number of key state supreme
court retention races.
... The rush to throw undisclosed money into state-level judicial
races signals that a dangerous movement has been taking shape
since the Citizens United ruling. And its potential to corrupt
is not limited to the voting booth or to one political party."
Christopher Moraf
"Under the 2010 Supreme
Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations now have few restrictions
on campaign financing."
Jeremy Kuzmarov, 2014
"The impact of Citizens
United corresponds to a widely-shared view that the US is indeed
not a democracy. Wealthy and business elites of the nation wield
all of the power, leaving most people on the margins."
Benjamin Dangl
"Over the past 200 years,
all over the world but especially in the United States, legal
systems have been changed to accomplish two things: limit the
legal liabilities of corporations, and give corporations the rights
and protections of citizens by extending constitutional rights
to corporations."
George Draffan
"It's an incestuous business,
what's going on in terms of the defense contractors and the Pentagon."
Senator Claire McCaskill
"A study by Swiss economists
Simon Luechinger and Christoph Moser "The Value of the Revolving
Door: Political Appointees and the Stock Market", focusing
on the defense industry due to its overwhelming weight in the
federal budget, found that firms who saw their former executives
appointed to government positions experienced an average stock
bump of 0.82 percent and 0.84 percent - for the one- and two-day
event windows - which translates into a great deal of money.
Likewise, when government officials took on corporate posts, the
firms in question noticed a bump of between 0.79 and 1.05 percent.
A corresponding dip in value could be seen upon the denial of
a government office to a given firm's executives. These gains
and dips were not due to peripheral factors affecting the defense
industry, the report made clear."
Nick Barrickman
"Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge,
Jr., in the month before he left the Pentagon to join the board
of Lockheed Martin, approved a $3 billion contract to build 20
Lockheed planes, after having long criticized the program as overpriced
and having threatened to cancel it. While on the Lockheed board,
Aldridge was named to head President Bush's commission on space
exploration. Lockheed is one of NASA's biggest contractors.
... John T. Chain, Commander of the Strategic Air Command, retired
in February 1991, and became a member of the board of Northrop
Grumman Corporation.
... Gordon R. England, Secretary of the Navy from May 2001 to
January 2003, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
from January 2003 to October 2003 and Secretary of the Navy since
October 2003, was executive vice president of General Dynamics
Corporation from 1997 to 2001.
... Ronald Fogleman, while serving on the Defense Policy Board,
which advised the Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on military
strategy, was hired by Boeing Company as a consultant while it
was seeking Pentagon approval for a $20 billion contract for aerial
refueling tankers.
... Joseph W. Ralston, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
from March 1996 to April 2000 and Commander, U.S. European Command
and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO, from May 2000 to January
2003, became director on the board of Lockheed Martin, April 2003.
... James G. Roche, became Secretary of the Air Force in 2001,
after holding various positions at Northrop Grumman from 1984
to 2001.
... Thomas E. White, Secretary of the Army from May 2001 until
April 2003, and who had retired as an Army brigadier general in
1990, had been a senior executive at Enron Corporation, 1990-2001.
... Donald C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy under George W. Bush,
is the Vice President of Northrop Grumman, which builds many of
the Navy's warships and receives billions of dollars to build
other weapons."
www.sourcewatch.org
"Firms dependent one way
or another on relations with the US government have every reason
to expect a financial shot in the arm when one of their own is
appointed to a top government post. The marriage of big business
and government has worked to help generate mega-profits for countless
companies."
Nick Barrickman
"The government-industry
revolving door puts industry-friendly experts in positions of
decision-making power. Often individuals rotate between working
for industry and working for the government in regulatory capacities,
arrangements that are fraught with potential for conflicts of
interest."
www.sourcewatch.org
BANKER AND FINANCIAL
KLEPTOCRATS
Robert Rubin-Citibank / Lloyd Blankfein-Goldman
Sachs
Jaime Dimon-Chase Bank / George Soros-hedge
fund & speculator
"The overall level of financial
concentration is much greater than can be seen by looking at the
big banks alone, since what has emerged in recent years are financial
conglomerates, centered in banking and insurance, and engaged
in a wide range of financial transactions that dominate the U.S.
economy, including off-balance sheet commitments. The ten largest
U.S. financial conglomerates, by 2008, held more than 60 percent
of U.S. financial assets, compared to only 10 percent in 1990,
creating a condition of financial oligopoly. JPMorgan Chase now
holds $1 out of every $10 of bank deposits in the country. So
do Bank of America and Wells Fargo. These three banks, plus Citigroup,
now issue around one out of every two mortgages and account for
two out of every three credit cards. "
John Bellamy Foster and Hannah
Holleman
"Manipulative characters,
people like Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben
Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, AIG's Edward Liddy, and GoldmanSachs
CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with most of our ruling class, have
used corporate money and power to determine the narrow parameters
of the debate in our classrooms, on the airwaves, and in the halls
of Congress - while looting the country. Many of these men appear
to be so morally and intellectually stunted that they are incapable
of acknowledging their responsibility for our decline."
Chris Hedges
"Since 2008, bad debt from
banks, corporations, and private investors was in transferred
from the balance sheets of private banks to the balance sheets
of the central banks as a result of nine years of bailout via
QE (quantitative easing), zero interest rate free money, and other
policies of the central banks. The central banks bailed out the
capitalist system in 2008-09 by shifting the bad debts to themselves.
In the course of the last 9 years, the private system loaded itself
up on still more debt than it had in 2007. Can the central banks,
already bloated with $20 trillion bail out bankers and friends
once again? That's the question. Attempting to unload the $20
trillion to make room for the next bailout-as the central banks
now propose to do-may result, however, in precipitating the next
crisis.
... After eight years of treating symptoms and not the disease,
the global financial system has become addicted to super-low rates
and to continued central bank excess liquidity provisioning. What
started in 2008 as a massive, somewhat coordinated central bank
lender of last resort experiment - i.e. global bank bailout -
has over the past eight years evolved into a more or less permanent
subsidisation of the private banking and financial systems by
central banks. The system has become addicted to free money.
... What happened was an unprecedented acceleration in financial
asset markets as equity and bond prices surged for eight years,
high end real estate prices rose to prior levels, derivatives
boomed, gold and crypto-currencies escalated in value, and income
inequality soared to record levels - all fueled by the massive
$10 trillion central bank liquidity injections that drove interest
rates to zero or below."
Jack Rasmus, 2017
"Former Goldman Sachs executive
Henry Paulson was appointed treasury secretary by George W. Bush.
Goldman Sachs was deeply implicated in the illegal dealings that
led to the 2007 collapse of the housing bubble and subsequent
financial crash. Paulson, the bank's former CEO, conveniently
presided over the bail-out of the banking industry at this time."
Nick Barrickman
"Since its founding in
1889, Goldman Sachs grown to be the most respected name on Wall
Street. The firm's annual revenues are now heading toward the
$70 billion level, primarily as a result of its incredibly profitable
proprietary trading business and its leadership in investment
banking. The firm earned almost $10 billion in 2006... The average
employee makes $622,000 a year... The top twenty-five executives
in the firm in 2006 were estimated to make $25 million each, with
CEO Lloyd Blankfein the top earner on Wall Street with $54 million.
Goldman [Sachs]'s influence extends beyond the ability of its
analysts and traders to drive stock or bond prices up and down,
as they do daily with the reports they write and the decisions
they make to buy or sell securities... It creates new financial
instruments that shape the global marketplace, it can make or
break the CEOs and government ministers who regularly pass through
its doors looking for capital and for recommendations linked to
their decisions, and it serves as the hub of an international
network of deal makers.
The revolving door that allows policy makers to leave top firms
to go into government and then to reenter those firms... is one
way that the financial community including = Goldman Sachs - maintains
its influence."
David Rothkopf
"In 2012 the Government
Accounting Office conducted the first top-to-bottom audit of the
Federal Reserve. It revealed that the Fed had provided $16 trillion
in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses
during the 2008 economic crisis."
Ellen Brown, 2016
"There is a special breed
of international financiers whose success typically is built upon
certain character traits. Those include cold objectivity, immunity
to patriotism, and indifference to the human condition. That profile
is the basis for proposing a theoretical strategy, called the
Rothschild Formula, which motivates such men to propel governments
into war for the profits they yield... As long as the mechanism
of central banking exists, it will be to such men an irresistible
temptation to convert debt into perpetual war and war into perpetual
debt."
G. Edward Griffin in his book "The
Creature from Jekyll Island"
"The Depression was not
accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence . The international
bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that
they might emerge as rulers of us all."
Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman
of the House Banking and Currency Committee, 1932
"40% of every dollar we
spend on goods and services is siphoned off the top as bank interest.
The US Government is in the absurd position of paying interest
to a private bank for every dollar that is put into circulation.
The Federal Reserve system has privatized the power to create
money, which, according to the Constitution, ought to belong to
Congress alone. Presently, interest on the national debt costs
the Federal government $500 billion in 2011, and, it is the fastest-growing
portion of the Federal budget."
Josh Mitteldorf - first Public
Banking in America conference April 28-29, Philadelphia
"George Soros had been
one of the world's most successful and most influential investors:
for the thirty years from 1969 through 2000, Soros's Quantum Fund
returned investors an average of 31 percent a year. Ten thousand
dollars invested with Soros in 1969 would have been worth $43
million by 2000. According to a study by LCH Investments, a fund
owned by the Edmond de Rothschild Group, during his professional
career Soros has been the world's most successful investor, earning,
as of 2010, a greater total profit than Warren Buffett, the entire
Walt Disney Company, or Apple."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"The dominant element in
our financial oligarchy is the investment banker. Associated banks,
trust companies and life insurance companies are his tools.The
development of our financial oligarchy followed lines with which
the history of political despotism has familiarized us: usurpation,
proceeded by gradual encroachment rather than violent acts, subtle
and often long-concealed concentration of distinct functions...
It was by processes such as these that Caesar Augustus became
master of Rome."
Louis Brandeis in Other People's
Money (1913)
"Goldman Sachs has indirect
control over all three branches of government."
www.zerohedge.com
"In the years prior to
the breaking of the Wall Street bubble, the financial industry
was engaged in predatory lending practices. They were targeting
the least educated, the Americans that were most easy to prey
on.
... The banks used their political power to make sure they could
continue engaging in these kinds of predatory behaviors. There's
no principle. It's money. It's campaign contributions, lobbying,
revolving door, all of those kinds of things.
... I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L crisis
and put many of these guys in prison. These are not just white-collar
crimes or little accidents. There were victims. That's the point.
There were victims all over the world. The financial sector really
brought down the global economy and if you include all of that
collateral damage, it's in the trillions of dollars."
Joseph Stiglitz
"A cartel of the most powerful
international banks - the current primary dealers of the Federal
Reserve System... together with hedge funds and their other buy-side
buddies, have power over nations... these cartel banks work to
expand their territorial control beyond their national borders
to put other populations in debt... The eventual end state of
this dynamic is one integrated, global banking empire. It's only
a matter of time before their collective balance sheets (plus
the large Chinese banks now that the cartel is colluding with
them) control the rest of the world."
Damon Vrabel
"During the past two centuries
when the peoples of the world were gradually winning their political
freedom from the dynastic monarchies, the major banking families
of Europe and America were actually reversing the trend by setting
up new dynasties of political control through the formation of
international financial combines. These banking dynasties had
learned that all governments must have sources of revenue from
which to borrow in times of emergency. They had also learned that
by providing such funds from their own private resources, they
could make both kings and democratic leaders tremendously subservient
to their will."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy
and Hope"
"As the financial crisis
raged in September 2008, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley sought
sanctuary from the Federal Reserve.
The last two big independent broker-dealers were allowed to become
bank holding companies, giving them access to government liquidity
that could keep them afloat."
Financial Times
"There is an established
and well-defined identity and community of interest between a
few leaders of finance, created and held together through stock
ownership, interlocking directorates, partnership and joint account
transactions, and other forms of domination over banks, trust
companies, railroads, and public-service and industrial corporations,
which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration
of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men."
Pujo Committee - House Committee
on Banking and Currency, 1912
"It is estimated that some
70% of all equity shares traded are exchanged in private "dark
pools" operated by the too-big-to-fail banks and Wall Street,
and the majority of the remaining 30% of publicly traded shares
are traded by high-frequency trading machines that hold the shares
for a few seconds, or however long is needed to skim the advantages
offered by proximity to the exchange and speed."
Charles Hugh Smith
CORPORATE KLEPTOCRATS
Charles Koch / Bill Gates
"The Koch Briothers have
bought the Republican Party. They paid a specific amount and now
they own it. There hasn't been anything like that in American
history."
Professor Sheldon Wolen, 2014
"The 2014 Forbes 400 list
came out in mid-September. Since then, in less than two months,
the four Waltons made $4.8 billion dollars, and the Koch brothers
made $1.8 billion dollars. $6.6 billion is enough to pay the total
food stamp benefits for all 48 million recipients for an entire
month. Warren Buffett made 3.3 billion dollars in less than two
months."
www.truth-out.org, 2014
"The 2012 and 2014 elections
were the most expensive in American history and were financed
largely by corporate money.
A report issued by the Sunlight Foundation, a government accountability
group, found that for every dollar the nation's most politically
active companies spent on political influence, they received $760
from the government in the form of federal business and support.
In total, the study reported that 200 of the country's top campaign
donors spent $5.8 billion on political lobbying and campaign contributions
between 2007 and 2012 and received a whopping $4.4 trillion in
return."
Alex Ellefson
"Among the world's ten
richest people are the conservatives Charles and David Koch. They
are major funders of the Tea Party, and spent an estimated $290
million to aid in Republicans' election in the recent mid-term,
helping to put out some 44,000 political ads in an attempt to
place the Senate back into Republican hands."
Benjamin Dangl
"BMGF (Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation), PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in
Health) and WHO (World Health Organization) were criminally negligent
trialling the vaccines on a vulnerable, uneducated and under-informed
population in India of school administrators, students and their
parents who were not provided informed consent or advised of potential
adverse effects or required to be monitored post-vaccination."
from the writ of petition submitted
to the Supreme Court of India in 2012 by Kalpana Mehta, Nalini
Bhanot and Dr. Rukmini Rao
"The Koch Party is not
as large as the Democrats or the Republicans, but is still unprecedented
in size, scope and reach. Like other political parties, it has
a platform, donors and constituents, electoral and advertising
strategies, voter data, and, after the 2014 midterms, members
of Congress ready to shepherd its pro-corporate, anti-regulatory
agenda."
www.alternet.org
"Bill Gates and Warren
Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs,
as is Ted Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1
billion of his tax-free stock option earnings into various birth
reduction programs in the developing world.
The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy
and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they
involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and
other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile.
... Were the intent of Gates really to improve the health and
well-being of black Africans, the same hundreds of millions of
dollars the Gates Foundation has invested in untested and unsafe
vaccines could be used in providing minimal sanitary water and
sewage systems. Vaccinating a child who then goes to drink feces-polluted
river water is hardly healthy in any respect. But of course cleaning
up the water and sewage systems of Africa would revolutionize
the health conditions of the Continent."
F. William Engdahl, 2010
"The market in which the
new elites operate is now international in scope. Their fortunes
are tied to enterprises that operate across national boundaries...
They have more in common with their counterparts in Brussels or
Hong Kong than with the masses of Americans not yet plugged into
the network of global communications."
Christopher Lasch
"In the United States,
a huge percentage of the most successful companies are owned by
family dynasties, and most of the richest individuals are heirs
to these family dynasties. The picture that begins to emerge better
reflects that of an aristocracy, rather than a democracy."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"In December 2012, in the
small village of Gouro, Chad, Africa, situated on the edge of
the Sahara Desert, five hundred children were locked into their
school, threatened that if they did not agree to being force-vaccinated
with a meningitis A vaccine, they would receive no further education.
These children were vaccinated without their parents' knowledge.
This vaccine was an unlicensed product still going through the
third and fourth phases of testing.
Within hours, one hundred and six children began to suffer from
headaches, vomiting, severe uncontrollable convulsions and paralysis.
The children had to wait one full week for a doctor to arrive
while the team of vaccinators proceeded to vaccinate others in
the village.
When the doctor finally came, he could do nothing for the children.
The team of vaccinators, upon seeing what had happened, fled the
village in fear.
After being shuttled around like cattle, many of these sick, weak
children were finally dumped back in their village without a diagnosis
and each family was given an unconfirmed sum of £1000 by
the government. No forms were signed and no documentation was
seen. They were informed that their children had not suffered
a vaccine injury.
The groups involved with this project were PATH, WHO, UNICEF,
and the Gates Foundation. During investigations, it was discovered
that the whole project was being run by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation."
www.vactruth.com, October 5, 2014
"AIG's Hank Greenberg,
who saved about $300 million when his high-risk insurance company
was bailed out by our tax money, sued the federal government because
he felt cheated by the bailout, even though without the bailout
his stock would have dropped to zero.
Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, criticized fracking regulations for "holding
back the American economic recovery," and then protested
when a fracking water tower was to be built near his home."
Paul Buchhet
"The billionaire Koch Brothers
spent close to $400 million on their conservative network for
the 2012 election."
www.philly.com
"In 2005, Bill Gates was
worth $46.5 billion and Warren Buffett $44 billion. That year,
the combined wealth of the 120 million people who made up the
bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population was around $95 billion
- barely more than the sum of the fortunes of these two men."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"Polio vaccines for infants
funded by the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation
(GAVI) are causing deaths and disabilities.
The main vaccinations in question were the polio vaccine and the
5-in-1 pentavelent vaccine, which were said to be responsible
for the deaths and disability of a number of children in Pakistan,
India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Japan.
The vaccines were funded by the Global Alliance for Vaccination
and Immunization (GAVI) an organization financed by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program, the International Federation
of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, the Rockefeller Foundation,
the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health
Organization (WHO) and the World Bank."
Express Tribune of Pakistan, 2011
"Dynastic families establish
'philanthropic foundations' to serve a dual purpose of justifying
their wealth and influence (by being perceived as 'giving back'),
but which, in actuality, provide concentrations of wealth managed
for the purpose of 'strategic giving': to undertake social engineering
projects with an ultimate objective of maintaining social control.
While appearing to be 'charitable' institutions, the major foundations
are predominantly interested in the process of long-term social
engineering. Notably among such foundations are the Rockefeller
Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, Open Society
Institute, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among
many others."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"On average, for every
dollar spent on influencing politics, the nation's most politically
active corporations received $760 from the government."
Sunlight Foundation study
"Global Alliance for Vaccination
and Immunisation (GAVI) was using an untested vaccine on Pakistani
children. Giving this dangerous vaccine to children shows the
lack of empathy associated with these organizations.
GAVI was blamed for the deaths of 10,000 children in Pakistan
when they administered polio vaccines that resulted in casualties."
[GAVI is heavily funded by the Gates Foundation]
Susanne Posel, 2013
MEDIA KLEPTOCRATS
Eric Schmidt-Google / Jeff Bezos-Amazon/Washington
Post
"Google is destroying the
most glorious gift humanity was granted in the last 300 years
[the internet]. The future under Google is a fascist dystopia,
their way or the highway, no room for dissidents, no room for
free speech. Google is a boot stomping on your face for eternity.
Google is the deep state. Forget about conventional wars, forget
about spies, forget about intelligence agencies, forget about
all of that. It's all about the internet and Google running the
internet. They decide how you feel, what you think, what information
you can and can't look at, and ultimately who does and doesn't
have a voice."
David Bowie's final message written
weeks before he died, 2015
"The American media does
not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest
groups that empower the government. The function of the "mainstream
media" is to sell products and to brainwash the audience
for the government and interest groups. By subscribing to it,
Americans support their own brainwashing."
Paul Craig Roberts
"The mainsteam media's
view of the world is much the same as the view from the State
Department and the Pentagon."
Michael Parenti in his book "Contrary
Notions"
"To keep information from
the public is the function of the corporate media."
Gore Vidal
"How the press loves to
brag bout its freedom. Yes, the press may be free to lie and distort
and suppress and deceive and malign, but is it free to tell the
truth? Many have reason to believe that the truth is dead as far
as the mass media concerned."
Willis Carto
"Media in the United States
convey a remarkably uniform view of the world, and it has been
a politically specific one: anticommunist, pro-corporate, and
nationalist."
Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R.
Judd in their book "The Democratic Facade"
"The people who own and
control the mainstream media are never going to risk their salaries
to explore the unanswered questions of 9-11 or the money trails
of JP Morgan Chase Bank, GoldmanSachs, Citibank, Haliburton, Blackwater
and Homeland Security, or the Rothschilds, or the Rockefellers
or the secrecy of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg
Group, the Trilateral Commission, Skull and Bones, the Bushes
and the Carlyle Group or our Federal Reserve System and it's 12
private Federal Reserve Banks or the IMF or the World Bank."
Chris Pratt from his movie "Deception"
"The media provides a forum
for those in power."
Amy Goodman in her book "Exception
to the Rulers"
"Big media in the United
States effectively represent the interests of corporate America."
9/11 and American Empire : Intellectuals
Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott
REGULATORY KLEPTOCRACY
"A "revolving door"
exists between boards of corporations, think tanks, foundations,
educational institutions and advisory groups, not to mention between
the state and corporate sectors."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"In 1960, Senate investigators
discovered that FDA officials had been receiving financial incentives
from the companies they were supposed to regulate. In 1969, a
congressional study revealed that thirty-seven of forty-nine top
FDA officials who left the agency took jobs with food and drug
companies."
Jeffrey M. Smith
"The U.S. government agencies
have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and
told them to do."
Henry Miller, in charge of biotechnology
issues at the FDA from 1979 to 1994
"Corporations dominate
public policy making via lobbying, formal advisory committees,
political campaign financing, and a constantly revolving door
between business and government. Each of these mechanisms of influence
is supposed to be regulated."
George Draffan
"A revolving door blurs
the lines between one of the nation's most important regulatory
agencies and the interests it regulates.
Former employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
routinely help corporations try to influence SEC rulemaking, counter
the agency's investigations of suspected wrongdoing, soften the
blow of SEC enforcement actions, block shareholder proposals,
and win exemptions from federal law.
The revolving door was on display in 2012 when the investment
industry opposed one of the top priorities of the SEC chairman,
a plan to tighten regulation of money market funds. Former SEC
employees lobbied to block the plan, and an SEC Commissioner who
previously worked for an investment firm played a pivotal role
in derailing it."
Michael Smallberg
"The revolving door between
government defense leadership positions and leadership positions
in the defense contracting community has become a fixture of Washington
life."
Nicholas Kristof
"There is a long history
of a revolving door between Monsanto and the US agencies that
regulate its activities.
Ever since the first Bush Administration, presidents have been
appointing ex-Monsanto lawyers, consultants, directors, chairmen,
and CEOs to highly important positions in the FDA [Food and Drug
Administration] and EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]. Some
examples include:
... Linda Fisher worked for the EPA then headed Monsanto's Washington
lobbying office before becoming deputy administrator of the EPA.
She then became a Vice President of Government Affairs at Monsanto
followed by vice president at DuPont.
... Margaret Miller, a senior Monsanto scientist, became Deputy
Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, in the
FDA.
... Michael R. Taylor, a lawyer for Monsanto for several years
became deputy commissioner for policy at the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and then Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection
Service of the Dept of Agriculture. In 2010 he was appointed deputy
commissioner for foods at the FDA."
www.herinst.org/
"The American empire is
ruled by a group of people who collectively act very much like
a king. They run our largest corporations and, through them, our
government. They cycle through the "revolving door"
back and forth between business and government. Because they fund
political campaigns and the media, they control elected officials
and the information we receive. These men and women are in charge
regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats control the White
House or Congress. They are not subject to the people's will and
their terms are not limited by law."
John Perkins
"The Food and Drug Administration
is so closely linked to the biotech industry now that it could
be described as their Washington branch office."
Betty Martini of the consumer group
Mission Possible
"Michael Taylor, a former
attorney for Monsanto, went to work for the United States Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), where he helped draft FDA's policy
declaring that genetically modified foods are "generally
regarded as safe" (GRAS). While at the FDA, Taylor also wrote
the policy that exempted biotech foods from labeling. His former
law firm, which still represented Monsanto, then began suing dairies
that labeled their milk rBGH-free (Monsanto's bovine growth hormone
to increase milk production). After these policies were written,
Taylor left the FDA and eventually went back to work for Monsanto.
... Ann M. Veneman, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture (2001-2004),
previously served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture,
Food and Trade, a group funded by Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, and
Archer Daniels Midland, and served on the board of directors for
Calgene Inc (makers of genetically-engineered Flavr Savr tomato,
bought by Monsanto in 1997)"
www.sourcewatch.org
"The movement of people
to and from the financial industry is a key feature of the SEC.
... The SEC has the power to affect investors, financial markets,
and the economy. Yet, the SEC has exempted certain senior employees
from a "cooling off period" that would have restricted
their ability to leave the SEC and then represent clients before
the agency. In addition, the SEC has shielded some former employees
from public scrutiny by blacking out their names in documents
they must file when they go through the revolving door.
The SEC is a microcosm of the federal government, where widespread
revolving expands the opportunities for private interests to sway
public policy."
Michael Smallberg
"At the FDA, there seemed
to be a trend in the place toward approval at any price. It went
from a university-like setting where there was independent scientific
review to an atmosphere of 'approve, approve, approve... the thinking
is, 'How many things can we approve this year?' Somewhere along
the way they abdicated their responsibility to the public welfare."
FDA veterinarian Richard Burroughs
describing what the saw at the FDA
"Monsanto is a virtual
retirement home for members of the Clinton administration."
The Globe and Mail newspaper, London,
UK
"At the top of the FDA
there are political appointees not necessarily bound by science,
but often influenced by other agendas. Many pass through the agency
at a rapid clip, moving from one regulated enterprise to another.
At the same time, some of the finest scientists and public servants
that I have ever met worked at the FDA. Unfortunately many of
them are often hired away by universities, nonprofit groups, and
other public health agencies, leaving a less dedicated and less
competent residue of people not highly sought after outside of
government."
James Turner, author of "The
Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on the Food and Drug Administration"
"People think the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) is protecting them. It isn't. What
the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as
different as night and day."
former FDA Commissioner Dr. Herbert
Ley said in 1969
"The SEC's revolving door
seems to be more active than ever."
Senator Charles Grassley, a senior
member of the Senate Finance Committee, 2011
"We found there was a huge
number of connections of people who had gone through the revolving
door to the banks and back again, with alarming speed. The biggest
banks had the most concentrated connections, and the countries
that had the biggest connections were the UK, the US and Switzerland."
Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) study led by David Miller, 2009
"The revolving door that
allows policy makers to leave top firms to go into government
and then to reenter those firms, is one way that the financial
community maintains its influence."
David Rothkopf
"In 1976 several FDA officials
and drug company executives were convicted on corruption, racketeering,
and similar charges for a bribery scheme that went on from 1989-1992.
Generic drug companies paid off FDA officials to approve their
drugs and block approval of competitors' drugs. The generic drug
companies also withheld data and even substituted other companies'
brand name drugs for evaluation, instead of risking an evaluation
of their own product."
Jeffrey M. Smith
"The first head of the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), William Ruckleshaus, became
Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs of the timber giant Weyerhaeuser
Company, then returned to head the EPA in 1983. In 1988 he was
appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Browning Ferris
Industries, the nation's largest solid waste company, and held
board positions for Monsanto, Pharmacia Corporation, Nordstrom,
Weyerhaeuser and others."
www.herinst.org/
"A report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) found
that from 2001 through 2010, more than 400 SEC alumni filed almost
2,000 disclosure forms saying they planned to represent an employer
or client before the agency. Those disclosures are just the tip
of the iceberg, because former SEC employees are required to file
them only during the first two years after they leave the agency."
Michael Smallberg
"The major think tanks
of the nation are the policy-makers of the American Empire. Think
tanks bring together elites from most power sectors of society
- the military, political, corporate, banking, intelligence, academia,
media, etc. - and they discuss, debate and ultimately produce
strategy blueprints and recommendations for American foreign policy.
Individuals from these think tanks move in and out of the policy-making
circles, creating a revolving door between the policy-planners
and those that implement them".
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"A report by The Project
on Government Oversight (POGO), says that former employees of
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) routinely help corporations
try to influence S.E.C. rule-making, counter the agency's investigations
of suspected wrongdoing, soften the blow of S.E.C. enforcement
actions, block shareholder proposals and win exemptions from federal
law.
... The report says that in three cases against UBS, after enforcement
actions threatened to limit the giant Swiss bank's ability to
issue new securities, the bank hired former S.E.C. lawyers. Each
time, the report says, the agency granted relief.
... The POGO report found that from 2001 through 2010, 419 alumni
of the S.E.C. filed almost 2,000 disclosure forms saying they
planned to represent an employer or client before the agency.
... The report also found that former employees had helped companies
avoid certain penalties and thwart regulatory initiatives, including
an effort by Mary L. Schapiro, then its chairwoman, to reform
money market funds, a sector central to the financial crisis.
The report noted that former S.E.C. employees had lobbied to block
the plan."
Ben Protess and Susanne Craig,
2013
"War profiteering fits
hand-in-glove with secured profits from "defense" contracts.Such
practices win bi-partisan support and keep well oiled Washington's
ubiquitous revolving doors."
Saul Landau and Nelson P. Valdes
"A report by a non-profit
government watchdog group - Project on Government Oversight (POGO)
- said former SEC employees, hired away from the commission by
the private sector, "routinely" help their new employers
to influence the agency and blunt SEC enforcement actions.
The POGO called the phenomenon a "revolving door" that
blurs the lines between one of the nation's most important regulatory
agencies and the interests it regulates."
Scott Cohn
"At least 219 former officials
at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have left since
2006 to help clients with business before the agency, bringing
fresh allegations of a "revolving door" that leaves
the commission too cozy with the Wall Street firms it regulates.
Between 2006 and 2010 there were 219 former SEC employees who
filed letters with the agency indicating their intent to represent
a client with business before the commission.
In all, those former officials advised firms on SEC business nearly
800 times."
Tim Reid
"The Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) has tapped a Wall Street lawyer to police Wall
Street.
The appointment comes as no surprise because the agency typically
draws regulators from the ranks of the regulated. But it does
illustrate a significant problem: relying heavily on people with
industry connections."
Michael Smallberg, 2013
"The revolving door has
connected the Clinton Cabinet with major manufacturers (Lockheed
Martin, Union Carbide, and Ford Motors), banks and investment
firms (Goldman Sachs and Citigroup), corporate foundations and
think tanks (Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Brookings Institution),
and public relations firms (Hill & Knowlton and Timmons)."
George Draffan
ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC
KLEPTOCRACY
"Over the last thirty years,
in parallel with deregulation and the rising power of money in
American politics, significant portions of American academia have
deteriorated into 'pay to play' activities. The sale of academic
expertise for the purpose of influencing government policy, the
courts, and public opinion is now a multibillion-dollar business.
Academia has become embedded within the finance industry and its
greatest apologist."
Charles H. Ferguson in his book
"Predator Nation", 2012
"A study of major research
centers in the field of engineering found that 35 percent would
allow corporate sponsors to delete information from papers prior
to publication."
Jeffrey M. Smith
"Academia have become part
of the business, banking, military, and political nexus. The ivory
tower was supposed to be a place devoted to knowledge for its
own sake and truth. Now, universities pursue truths that someone
will fund a grant for."
Larry Beinhart
"It is simply no longer
possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published,
or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative
medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which
I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor
of the New England Journal of Medicine."
Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician
and longtime editor-in-chief of the New England Medical Journal
(NEMJ)
"The case against science
is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps
half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample
sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant
conflicts of .interest, together with an obsession for pursuing
fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a
turn towards darkness."
Dr. Richard Horton, current editor-in-chief
of the Lancet
"There is a systemic problem
where industry, academia and government combine to determine the
health of the country. Industry provides funding for public health
reports, and academic leaders with industry ties play key roles
in developing them. A revolving door exists between government
jobs and industry jobs, and government research funding goes to
the development of drugs and devices instead of healthy nutrition.
T. Colin Campbell
"With less research money
available from public sources, more and more scientists in the
U.S. and Europe are dependent on corporate sponsors, and hence,
corporate acceptance of their research and results. Among Britain's
top research universities, for example, dependence on private
funds often amounts to 80 to 90 percent of the total research
budget."
Jeffrey M. Smith
"Thirty-six private college
presidents were paid more than $1 million in 2012, according to
a 2014 report from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
... Median pay was up 2.5% over 2011, to nearly $400,000.
The highest paid president in 2012 was Shirley Ann Jackson from
New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She made $7.1 million.
RPI specializes in engineering and science and has 5,400 undergrad
students and 1,200 graduate students.
... The president of a similarly sized school, Quinnipiac University,
came in second. John Lahey raked in $3.8 million that year, his
25th at the school.
... Columbia University's Lee Bollinger made $3.4 million in 2012.
Rounding out the top five are University of Pennsylvania's Amy
Guttman, who got $2.5 million, and Charles Middleton at Roosevelt
University in Chicago who made $1.8 million.
... Meanwhile, average tuition at private colleges was up 4.2%
that year, jumping from $27,883 to $29,056, according to The College
Board. And it's still on the rise. This year, tuition is up 3.7%.
... More students are taking on debt to finance their college
education. Forty million Americans now have at least one outstanding
student loan. That's up from 29 million in 2008."
Katie Lobosco
"In higher education today
corporations not only sponsor a growing amount of research, they
frequently dictate the terms under which it is conducted."
Atlantic Monthly
"A poll of 500 scientists
working in either government or recently privatized research institutes
in the UK revealed that 30 percent had been asked to change their
research conclusions by their sponsoring customer."
Jeffrey M. Smith
NGO, AID AGENCY, FOUNDATION
AND THINK TANK KLEPTOCRACY
"It is a well-known and
documented fact in independent media circles that international
aid is nothing but business masquerading as charity. Approximately
80% of the aid money dedicated to developing countries ends up
in the coffers of businesses and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) from the donor countries. Far from helping, this dynamic
only creates a relationship of dependency hampering, even preventing
the "recipient" country from developing the very structures
which could liberate it from this colonial relationship."
Julie Lévesque, 2015
"The NGOs carry out US
imperial policies in Haiti in exchange for "charity funding"
- which means, they money-launder US taxpayer and donor dollars
and put it in their pockets. US imperial policy is about destroying
Haiti manufacturing and local economy, expropriating Haiti natural
resources and making a larger Haiti market for their subsidized
Wall Street monopolies."
Ezili Dantò, 2013
"The U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), among other agencies, encouraged Haiti to
start exporting manufactured and processed agricultural products,
in tandem with emphasizing the need to import grain staples on
the international market U.S. experts worked to disassemble Haiti's
rural economy By 2003, approximately 80% of all rice consumed
in Haiti was imported from the United States."
Leah Chavla, 2010
"The New York Times reported
that major think tanks, including the Brookings Institute and
the Atlantic Council, have allowed foreign donors to call the
shots on their policy prescriptions."
Mike Krieger
"The tax-free status of
many institutions - including the Rockefeller Foundation, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Ford Foundation
- allowed the incredibly wealthy to shield their fortunes from
taxation, appear to do good works and boost public opinion of
their principle members while influencing, writing and developing
official public policy through the steering mechanisms of its
own tax-free grant making, think tank and research powers. Many
of its directors and board members were in "respectable"
positions to shift into official government positions through
the revolving door without appearing to be acting on behalf of
their corporate masters."
Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
"The U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), among other agencies, encouraged Haiti to
start exporting manufactured and processed agricultural products,
in tandem with emphasizing the need to import grain staples on
the international market . U.S. experts worked to disassemble
Haiti's rural economy. By 2003, approximately 80% of all rice
consumed in Haiti was imported from the United States."
Leah Chavla, Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, 2010
"International "aid"
is a well-known capitalist scheme aimed at developing markets
in the global south for businesses from the North. Of course this
"aid" will benefit Haitians. But only the very few elite
ones: those in power and the rich corporate elite. Haiti's open
for business and deluxe hotels will be welcoming businessmen so
they can set up their sweat shops in a cool and luxurious environment."
Julie Lévesque, 2015
"NGOs and their Hollywood,
media and academic cohorts play firemen to the US government's
arsonist role in Haiti and the global south. The professional
posers - the white industrial charitable complex - play an underhanded
game. For instance, The Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR) analyzed the $1.15 billion pledged after the January 2010
quake to Haiti and found that the vast majority of the money it
could follow went straight to U.S. companies or organizations,
more than half in the Washington area alone."
Ezili Dantò, 2013
"The American Petroleum
Institute is run by a board of directors that includes an executive
from ARAMCO, the Saudi state-owned oil company that takes its
orders from the Saudi ruling family."
Mike Krieger
"The Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, as well as the Gates-Buffett led billionaires'
"giving pledge" are keeping in stride with the groundwork
laid and continued by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation.
Heavily funded initiatives to push vaccines, birth control, population
control, Western-oriented "education," GMO and corporate-dominated
agriculture and the like remain some of the most consequential
and troubling policies done in the name of "good" by
tax-free entities wielding enormous, nearly incalculable wealth
and power."
Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
KLEPTOCRATS IN RELIGION
Rev. Pat Robertson
"The real value of the
Catholic Church is its secret worldwide monetary network headquartered
in a sovereign state and a financial division in the Cayman Islands
with no accountability or fear of criminal prosecution.
The Church has roughly 5,000 prelates around the world, each one
appointed by the Pope based on the man's demonstrated loyalty
to the Church above all else, as heads of dioceses. Each one has
the capacity for hidden bank accounts, investments, slush funds
named for some phony charity or foundation. Under the guise of
"freedom of religion," most can operate with little
or no governmental oversight.
Betty Clermont
"The Vatican has large
investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America,
with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich.
In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan
Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New
York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions
of shares in the most powerful international corporations such
as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric,
International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative
estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the
U.S.A. alone."
Avro Manhattan from his book "The
Vatican Billions"
"The Vatican rules over
approximately 2 billion of the world's 6.1 billion people. The
colossal wealth of the Vatican includes enormous investments with
the Rothschild's in Britain, France, and the USA, and with giant
oil and weapons corporations like Shell and General Electric.
The Vatican solid gold bullion worth billions, is stored with
the Rothschild controlled Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve
Bank."
Alan Lamont
"Vaticano S.p.A. by Gianluigi
Nuzzi was published January 1, 2009. Documents obtained by a Vatican
employee who didn't want them published until after his death
show the Vatican Bank [Institute for Works of Religion (IOR)]
to be "a unique 'offshore' corridor for politicians around
the world who want to keep their money away from legal controls.The
IOR is like a credit card that ensures privileges to be granted
in exchange for political backing, legal provisions and business
support"."
Betty Clermont
"With the spreading gap
between rich and poor, the ideal of a public state in which all
classes participated was slowly supplanted by the dominance of
a deep state in which a few manipulated the many. This was facilitated
by a parallel development in the media, thanks in large part to
huge influxes of foreign money invested by new press barons ...
including the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, with
links to the Korean CIA."
Peter Dale Scott
"The Institute for Works
of Religion (IOR), commonly referred to as the Vatican Bank, is
a privately held financial institution located inside Vatican
City. Founded in 1942, the IOR's role is to safeguard and administer
property intended for works of religion or charity. The bank accepts
deposits only from top Church officials and entities, according
to Italian legal scholar Settimio Caridi. It is run by a president
but overseen by five cardinals who report directly to the Vatican
and the Vatican's secretary of state. Because so little is known
about the bank's daily operations and transactions, it has often
been called "the most secret bank in the world"."
Avi Jorisch
"The EU Commission and
the Council of Europe's MONEYVAL inspectors ... are seemingly
oblivious to the accusation before the International Criminal
Court at The Hague of Vatican "crimes against humanity."
They sustain the pretense of Vatican decency and respectability
because they want the Pope's banking empire to continue servicing
their "dark money" - a financial system so effective
the Pope was just moved up from 7th to 5th on Forbe's list of
the "Most Powerful People in the World"."
Betty Clermont
"Billionaire Sun Myung
Moon lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times. The losses
in supporting conservative media are part of a strategy of ideological
control. He and other billonaires buy bulk quantities of ultra-conservative
books bringing them to the top of the NY Times bestseller list
and then give away copies to "subscribers" to their
websites and publications. They fund conservative "think
tanks" like Heritage and Cato with hundreds of millions of
dollars a year. All this buys them respectability and a megaphone."
Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
"The Vatican's treasure
of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine
to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is
stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while
banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just
a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S.
alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations
of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property,
stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of
the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to
defy any rational assessment."
Avro Manhattan from his book "The
Vatican Billions"
EUROPE KLEPTOCRATS
Tony Blair-Britain / Nicolas Sarkozy-France
"The late 1970s and early
1980s was the decade of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They
both sharply cut taxes at the top - Reagan slashed the highest
marginal tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and reduced the
maximum capital gains tax to 20 percent-reined in trade unions,
cut social welfare spending, and deregulated the economy.
This Washington Consensus was exported abroad, too. Its greatest
impact, and its greatest validation, was in communist regimes.
The collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc and the adoption
of market economics in communist China ended that ideology's seventy-year-long
intellectual and political challenge to capitalism, leaving the
market economy as the only system anyone has come up with that
works."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"While modern dynasties
share many characteristics of past ruling families, they have
their major distinctions, largely derived from the fact that most
of them do not hold formal political or absolute authority. Past
dynasties typically held absolute authority over their local regions,
states or kingdoms. That type of authority does not exist at the
major state, regional or global levels today, with few exceptions,
such as the ruling monarchs of the Gulf Arab dictatorships. Yet,
while the mechanism of authority is less centralized or formalized
in the modern world, the scope and reach of authority - or influence
- has expanded exponentially. In short, while in past eras, a
single family may have exerted absolute authority over a comparably
small region or empire, today, the indirect influence of a dynastic
family may reach across the globe, though it remains far from
absolute."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Why are millions of people
in Britain persuaded that a collective punishment called "austerity"
is necessary?
Following the economic crash in 2008, a rotten system was exposed.
For a split second the banks were lined up as crooks with obligations
to the public they had betrayed.
But within a few months, the message changed. The mugshots of
guilty bankers vanished from the tabloids and something called
"austerity" became the burden of millions of ordinary
people.
Today, many of the premises of civilised life in Britain are being
dismantled in order to pay back a fraudulent debt - the debt of
crooks. The "austerity" cuts are said to be 83 billion
British pounds. That's almost exactly the amount of tax avoided
by the same banks and by corporations like Amazon and Murdoch's
News UK. Moreover, the crooked banks are given an annual subsidy
of £100bn in free insurance and guarantees - a figure that
would fund the entire National Health Service."
John Pilger
"Former French President
Nicolas Sarkozy is under investigation for his involvement in
a drug deal worth over $54 million. Investigators discovered that
he was connected to possible drug traffickers, and regularly used
a private airplane that was caught attempting to transport large
amounts of cocaine internationally.
... The Dassault Falcon 50 jet that was raided on a Dominican
Republic Airfield on March 19, 2013, was regularly used by Sarkozy,
and there is a trail of paperwork connecting him and his associates
to the aircraft. He is also known to have been on the jet on several
different occasions while the operations were occurring, flying
at least three times between December 2012 and February 2013.
... Sarkozy is well-known for his history of corruption and has
been facing numerous criminal charges since he lost his presidential
immunity from prosecution in 2012."
John Vibes, 2015
"The City of London dominates
the world's speculative markets. A tightly interlocking group
of corporations, involved in raw materials extraction, finance,
insurance, transportation, and food production, controls the lion's
share of the world market, and exerts virtual ``choke point''
control over world industry."
Jeffrey Steinberg
"In China, the political
decision-making process is given the democratic facade. Individuals
are perceived to rise by way of their virtue and merit, slowly
making their way up to leadership positions, all the way up to
the Politburo Standing Committee, and Party members participate
in selection process. In reality, the Party bosses behind the
scenes control the major factions within the Party which in turn
control the votes.
That's how the process works in the European Union as well, when
it comes to electing members of the European Commission president
and commissioners. As in China, European Union member states form
factions behind the scenes, and jockey for position, seeking allies,
to advance their preferred candidates for the most important posts
on the European Commission."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"It doesn't matter who
pays Tony Blair, as long as Tony Blair gets paid. When he's not
busy committing war crimes or advising JP Morgan, the former UK
Prime Minister, who has amassed a fortune estimated at over $115
million, can be found doing public relations work for some of
the world's most autocratic rulers... The oil and gas rich former
Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan has a horrible record when it comes
to human rights, but that doesn't stop Tony Blair from advising
the country's leadership in exchange for millions of dollars per
year."
Michael Krieger, 2014
"Thanks to lax legislation
and limp enforcement, SICAV Funds [translated as 'investment companies
with variable capital', similar to open-ended mutual funds] have
effectively become mini-tax havens allowing many of the Spain's
best-heeled individuals and families to avoid paying almost any
tax on their investment earnings. One way they do that is by not
cashing in their dividends or selling their shares in the funds,
since that would accrue taxes of 19 percent and 21 percent respectively.
Instead, what they do is execute regular draw-downs on their capital
investment. By withdrawing just part - rather than all - of their
initial investment, they can pay as little as 1 percent tax on
their earnings."
www.blacklistednews.com
"Ex-British Prime Minister
Tony Blair is now reported to be worth nearly 105 million dollars."
Philip Giraldi
"With the 2008 debt crisis,
there was an increased centralization of power in all technocratic
EU governing bodies including the European Commission, the European
Council and the European Central Bank.
... When it comes to electing members of the European Commission
president and commissioners, European Union member states form
factions behind the scenes, and jockey for position, seeking allies,
to advance their preferred candidates for the most important posts
on the European Commission.
... In Europe you have the formal appearance of a democratic process,
while behind the scenes, powerful factions vie for power, dictating
who gets appointed to the top spots in the technocratic institutions
that run the European Union. The European Parliament, which essentially
has no real power, is tasked with approving and appointing through
a largely ceremonial vote, rubber-stamping the preselected candidates
for president of the European Commission and his or her commissioners.
In the end, you have unelected technocrats implementing policies
the affect the lives of 500 million people in the EU."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2014
"At a lavish reception
at a private residence from which the press is barred, Kate and
William - Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - will shake the hands
of 15 wealthy couples who are each paying 35,000 British pounds
for the privilege. It is the start of an important US campaign
which they hope will pull in millions for their favourite charities.
The event will be hosted by British advertising mogul Sir Martin
Sorrell and his wife Cristiana at their vast apartment in mid-town
Manhattan.
... William and Kate are principally there to meet and greet and
to raise money for the Royal Foundation, the charity run by the
couple and Prince Harry.
... More than 650,000 British pounds was raised at a polo match,
with individuals paying up to 65,000 British pounds to play alongside
William."
Katie Nicholl and Caroline Graham
- www.dailymail.co.uk, December 2014
"Tony Blair gave Kazakhstan's
autocratic president advice on how to manage his image after the
slaughter of unarmed civilians protesting against his regime.
In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbayev, obtained by The Telegraph,
Mr Blair told the Kazakh president that the deaths of 14 protesters
"tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous
progress" his country had made.
Mr Blair, who is paid millions of pounds a year to give advice
to Mr Nazarbayev, goes on to suggest key passages to insert into
a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge,
to defend the action.
Mr Blair is paid through his private consultancy, Tony Blair Associates
(TBA), which he set up after leaving Downing Street in 2007. TBA
is understood to deploy a number of consultants in key ministries
in Kazakhstan. It is thought TBA's deal with Kazakhstan is worth
around £7 million a year."
The Telegraph newspaper, London,
2014
"The Duchess of Alba, Spain's second richest woman, passed
away this week at the age of 88. She was the head of the world's
most ennobled family, with a staggering 46 noble titles to its
name. Besides the titles and the privileges and prestige that
come with them, the duchess left behind an estimated wealth of
somewhere between ¤600 million and ¤3.2 billion.
The reason for such a gaping discrepancy is that it's almost impossible
to put a price tag on many of her family's most valuable possessions.
They include Christopher Columbus' first ever map of the Americas;
the first edition of Cervantes' Don Quixote; the first ever Bible
translated into Spanish; three Goyas, eight Rubens, a Velázquez
and 15 Rembrandts. That's not to count the family's castles, palaces,
stately homes and tens of thousands of hectares of land, almost
all of which have been passed down to her children and grandchildren.
The family has already benefited from preferential treatment by
the Spanish tax authorities: because of its cultural importance
90% of the family's foundation is exempt from inheritance tax.
As for the remaining 10%, it is to be taxed at an average rate
of 0.2%, meaning that out of a total estimated wealth of up to
¤3.2 billion, the Duchess' heirs will pay ¤6 million
in tax."
www.blacklistednews.com
"In China, the political
decision-making process is given the democratic facade. Individuals
are perceived to rise by way of their virtue and merit, slowly
making their way up to leadership positions, all the way up to
the Politburo Standing Committee, and Party members participate
in selection process. In reality, the Party bosses behind the
scenes control the major factions within the Party which in turn
control the votes.
That's how the process works in the European Union as well, when
it comes to electing members of the European Commission president
and commissioners. As in China, European Union member states form
factions behind the scenes, and jockey for position, seeking allies,
to advance their preferred candidates for the most important posts
on the European Commission."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"Many of Europe's richest
landowners and corporations receive billions of euros annually
from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). CAP has become
a huge slush fund for assorted European dukes, earls and princes.
The reason is simple: the payment of CAP subsidies is based on
acreage alone and takes no account of wealth, making the scheme
one of the most regressive imaginable - the more you own, the
more you get.
80 families in Andalusia pocketed a combined ¤100 million
in CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) funds last year. Of the total
¤2 billion spent on the region, one of Spain's poorest
with an unemployment rate of 35%, ¤1.6 billion ended up
in the pockets of landowners.
A similar trend has been witnessed across the EU, although it
is most pronounced in countries with a very unequal distribution
of land ownership - countries like Spain and the UK.
Billions of euros will continue to be pried from the half-empty
pockets of Europe's austerity-wracked workers and deposited in
the bank accounts of some of the continent's wealthiest companies
and families - not once, as happened with the bank bailouts, but
in perpetuity. In the most perverse of incentives, the more land
the nobility, both of old and new, buy up, the more money they
will receive in welfare checks."
www.blacklistednews.com
"Greece has failed to address
rising wealth/income inequality because the country's elites have
a vested interest in keeping things as they are. Since the early
1990s, a handful of wealthy families -- an oligarchy in all but
name -- has dominated Greek politics. These elites have preserved
their positions through control of the media and through old-fashioned
favoritism, sharing the spoils of power with the country's politicians.
Greek legislators, in turn, have held on to power by rewarding
a small number of professional associations and public-sector
unions that support the status quo."
writer Pavlos Eleftheriadis
"With the 2008 debt crisis,
there was an increased centralization of power in all technocratic
EU governing bodies including the European Commission, the European
Council and the European Central Bank.
Just like in China, in Europe you have the formal appearance of
a democratic process, while behind the scenes, powerful factions
vie for power, dictating who gets appointed to the top spots in
the technocratic institutions that run the European Union. The
European Parliament, which essentially has no real power, is tasked
with approving and appointing through a largely ceremonial vote,
rubber-stamping the preselected candidates for president of the
European Commission and the commissioners. In the end, you have
unelected technocrats implementing policies the affect the lives
of 500 million people in the EU."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"In the Britain, just 0.6%
of the population owns 69% of the land."
www.blacklistednews.com
EURASIA AND SOUTH
ASIA KLEPTOCRATS
Mikhail Khodorkovsky-Russia / Islom Karimov
& Gulnara Karimov (daughter)-Uzbekistan
"Russia, with a population
of 139 million, has the highest wealth inequality in the world
(except for a few Caribbean islands).
... Russia currently has 84,000 dollar millionaires, a figure
forecast to rise to 133,000 by 2018.
... Worldwide there is 1 billionaire for every $170 billion in
household wealth; but in Russia, there is 1 billionaire for every
$11 billion.
... Most of the dollar billionaires in Russia, made their fortunes
by buying up highly prized state assets of the old USSR, or through
securing lucrative contracts awarded by the Kremlin for which
the closest political connections are necessary."
www.economywatch.com, 2013
[2013 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report]
"With the collapse of the
Soviet Union, efforts were made to distribute state assets equitably:
most of the housing stock was given away to residents and shares
in Gazprom were allocated to Russian citizens.
But other choice assets in resource-rich companies went to the
chosen few, and subsequent developments reinforced the importance
of political connections rather than entrepreneurial talent."
www.economywatch.com, 2013
"Hamid Karzai's regime
in Afghanistan evolved into a full-blown narco-kleptocracy, its
banking and justice system operating as giant extortion rackets.
Government officials accepted bribes from Taliban commanders and
secured their release from prison to ensure the perpetuation of
the war so they could continue to grow rich off of foreign aid
money and the war economy."
Jeremy Kuzmarov, Global Research,
2014
"One hundred people in
India own wealth equivalent to 25% of India's GDP.
... India has more poor people than all
the poorest countries of Africa put together. India has more than
800 million people who live on less than .50 cents a day. It has
the largest population of malnourished children. It has deployed
its army against its poorest. The reason Narendra Modi is being
backed by all the corporations to be Prime Minister, is because
he has shown himself to be unblinking in the face of bloodshed."
Arundhati Roy
"The success of kleptocrats
rests on their ability to use a particular type of political strategy-
divide-and-rule. Members of society need to cooperate in order
to depose a kleptocrat. The kleptocrat may undermine such cooperation,
however, by using tax revenues, the rents from natural resources
and the funds from foreign aid to bribe other groups to maintain
his position."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
"An upmarket spa in Kazakhstan
plans to offer discerning tourists caviar spas. Visitors will
be offered a set of luxury treatments based on Beluga caviar,
a variety of cavier found primarily in the Caspian Sea. Considered
one of the best caviars in the world, Beluga cavier costs up to
$4,500 a pound."
http://rt.com, 2014
"Mining mogul and ex-Karnataka-state
minister Janardhan Reddy, after spending 3 years in jail on charges
of corruption, and released on bail in January 2015, has thrown
a wedding for his daughter costing an estimated $100 million.
Bride Brahmani's jewellery for the wedding cost $7.5 million,
while her sari cost a further $3.5 million. The guests were invited
to the wedding with gold-plated invitations, which arrived in
gold-plated boxes. Bollywood stars were lined-up to perform in
the three-day spectacular, and Bollywood directors were hired
to create sets that resembled ancient Hindu temples to form a
backdrop to the wedding, inside the sprawling grounds of the Bangalore
Palace. Guests were transported about in luxury bullock carts
and fed in a purpose-built village inside the grounds. Elephants
stood guard at the entrance of the huge air-conditioned tent where
the ceremony took place. An estimated 50,000 guests were in attendance.
... The extravagant event is taking place at the same time as
the government's demonetization of the country's currency, which
has forced millions of Indians to queue up in day-long lines outside
banks across the country as they attempt to change old currency
notes that are now worthless."
www.thesun.co.uk, November 2016
"Most of India's super-rich
weren't software pioneers or inventive manufacturers. Instead
too many people have gotten too rich based on their proximity
to the government. Land, natural resources, and government contracts
or licenses are the predominant sources of the wealth of our billionaires
and all of these factors come from the government."
Indian entrepreneur Raghuram Rajan
"A 1,000-room palace built
for Turkey's president Tayyip Erdogan will cost even more than
the original £385m ($615m) price tag.
The additional costs are due to a new 250-room private residence
for the president, and thousands of imported Italian trees.
It is bigger than either the White House or the Kremlin."
www.bbc.com, 2014
EAST ASIA AND SOUTHEAST
ASIA KLEPTOCRATS
Than Shwe-Myanmar / General Suharto-Indonesia
/ Sultan Bolkiah-Brunei
"In China, the political
decision-making process is given the democratic facade. Individuals
are perceived to rise by way of their virtue and merit, slowly
making their way up to leadership positions, all the way up to
the Politburo Standing Committee, and Party members participate
in selection process. In reality, the Party bosses behind the
scenes control the major factions within the Party which in turn
control the votes."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"The seventy richest members
of the NPC [National People's Congress] made more money in 2011
than the total combined net worth of all the members of all three
branches of U.S. government - the president and his cabinet, both
houses of Congress, and the justices of the Supreme Court. The
top seventy members of the NPC added $11.5 billion to their combined
net worth in 2011, bringing their total to $89.8 billion. That
2011 gain of the top seventy Chinese legislators is more than
50 percent greater than the total net worth of all 660 members
of the three federal branches of U.S. government, whose 2011 net
worth was $7.5 billion. The contrast is equally striking when
you compare the very richest members of the NPC with their U.S.
equivalents. The wealthiest 2 percent of the NPC-the top sixty
members-had an average net worth of $1.44 billion in 2011. The
top 2 percent of U.S. legislators-eleven Congress members-had
an average wealth of $323 million."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"Those who understand power
in China and how it works, know that they need to work with those
who wield power, so it's important that they know how the princeling
system works and how the family power system and dynastic structure
within China functions.
The Chinese economy and wealth is dominated by as few as 12 families
and as many as several hundred families. These families have immense
wealth and power. When you hold power in China, you are able to
build up networks of power and privilege, developing strategic
power alliances with other princeling families.
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"In a state-capitalist
system like China's, making money by being close to the state
isn't an exception to the rules or a violation of them - it is
how the system really works.
... In China, what moves this structure is not a market economy
and its laws of supply and demand, but a carefully balanced social
mechanism built around the particular interests of the revolutionary
families who constitute the political elite. China is a family-run
business.
... Greed is the driving force behind the protectionist walls
of the state-owned economy inside the system, and money is the
language."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"The descendents and the
families of the eight immortals [Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), Chen
Yun (1905-1995), Li Xiannian (1909-1992), Peng Zhen (1902-1997),
Yang Shangkun (1907-1998), Bo Yibo (1908-2007), Wang Zhen (1908-1993),
Song Renqiong (1909-2005)], and many of their supporting cadres,
as well as supporting cadres of former presidents Jiang Zemin
(1993-2003) and Hu Jintao (2003 -2013), spun vast networks in
which they were able to control major state-owned industries which
were responsible for China's rapid economic growth. These families
and their descendents were able to enrich themselves, siphoning
public funds into private and foreign bank accounts, hidden offshore
in the Caribbean, in Switzerland and various other opaque tax
havens and banking paradises.
... The descendents of the "eight immortals" are known
within China and outside China as "princelings". The
princelings lead lavish and extravagant lifestyles. They are largely
educated in elite Western universities like Oxford, Harvard and
Yale. The princelings are deeply influential within China by virtue
of their birth, because their relatives run the State-owned companies
and key institutions, and therefore, they have great access to
the levers of power.
Western political, corporate and financial interests seeking to
gain a foothold in China typically do so through reaching out
to the princelings. Major corporations and banks hire princelings
in order to gain access to the Chinese market through their parents
or relatives who run major state banks or industries. It is a
mutually beneficial relationship to enrich both the families and
the western banks or corporations involved. All the big western
Wall Street banks and city of London banks are involved."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"The "princelings"
are the sons and daughters of today's Chinese leadership, and
often the grandchildren of the leaders of the Maoist revolution.
They form an important political faction in the Chinese Communist
Party, and many of them are plutocrats."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"China is still at the
point of the gangster state - ruled by gangster crime families
which have been very effective in taking power, holding power
and exploiting power, and establishing family dynasties to continue
to wield power and accumulate wealth. They engage in backroom
deals with each other in order to decide who serves on the Politburo
Standing Committee and who rules the country. It's all a game
of power politics."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"Many accounts of the worst
kleptocracies illustrate how the ruler was able to use foreign
aid to stay in power and fight off challenges... Foreign aid seems
to have little positive effect on the rate of economic growth
in less-developed countries...There is a large amount of anecdotal
evidence that foreign aid leads to worse governance."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
"The Chinese president
is the chief dictator of China and holds enormous power, and past
presidents continue to wield enormous power through the networks
and the patronage systems that they established.
These main power factions and dominant families largely revolving
around former presidents and heads of state who manage significant
patronage networks, are able to negotiate and pre-decide behind
closed doors who is appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee
and who becomes President. It's the same system that has ruled
China for thousands of years.
... Xi Jinping, China's current president (a princeling), was
preselected many years ago to be president. Ultimately, Standing
Committee members choose the next President. The selection process
is organized behind the scenes by the main power factions within
Chinese politics - one centered around the former Chinese president
Jiang Zemin, and the other centered around former Chinese president
Hu Jintao."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"Many developing countries
have suffered under the personal rule of kleptocrats, who implement
highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of
their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification
or consumption... Kleptocratic policies are more likely when foreign
aid and rents from natural resources provide rulers with substantial
resources to buy off opponents."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
MIDDLE EAST KLEPTOCRATS
Sheikh Salman-Saudi Arabia / Hosni Mubarak-Egypt
"Kleptocratic regimes seem
to be more common in natural-resource-rich countries... Greater
natural resource rents facilitate kleptocracy... The presence
of oil increases the probability that a country will be a dictatorship."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
"Arab governments are undemocratic,
authoritarian, autocratic governments. They rule in spite of and
against the will of their peoples."
Rashid Khalidi
"40,000 Masai people will
be evicted from their homeland in Tanzania, because the Dubai
royal family has bought it with the intention of using it as a
reserve to hunt big game.
The sale of the land will rob them of their heritage and directly
or indirectly affect the livelihoods of 80,000 people. The area
is crucial for grazing livestock on which the nomadic Masai depend."
www.salon.com
"In powerful states and
empires, families have been essential in the process of constructing
and governing the major institutions within those societies, as
well as in the direct control of the imperial or state structure
itself. Whether emperors, kings, queens or sultans, family dynasties
have very often exerted direct political control of society. This
has been the case for much of human history."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"For Arab regimes, keeping
their chairs, keeping their thrones, keeping their money, their
power, is the only thing that's really important. Their people?
They don't care about their people."
Rashid Khalidi
AFRICA KLEPTOCRATS
Mobutu Sese Seko-Zaire / Jose Eduardo dos Santos-Angola / Robert
Mugabe-Zimbabwe
"Isabel dos Santos is Africa's
only female billionaire, and also the continent's youngest. She
has quickly and systematically garnered significant stakes in
Angola's strategic industries-banking, cement, diamonds and telecom-making
her the most influential businessperson in her homeland.
... Every major Angolan investment held by Isabel dos Santos stems
either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business
in the country or from a stroke of the president's pen [her father
Jose Eduardo dos Santos] that cut her into the action. Her story
is a rare window into the same, tragic kleptocratic narrative
that grips resource-rich countries around the world.
For President Dos Santos it's a foolproof way to extract money
from his country, while keeping a putative arm's-length distance
away. If the 71-year-old president gets overthrown, he can reclaim
the assets from his daughter. If he dies in power, she keeps the
loot in the family.
... The dos Santos family had Christmas trees flown in from New
York and $500,000 worth of bubbly imported from a Lisbon restaurateur.
...Some 70% of Angolans live on less than $2 a day. And by the
government's own count, 10% of the country's population is scrambling
for food due to drought and bureaucratic neglect."
Kerry A. Dolan and Rafael Marques
de Morais, 2014
"Jacob Zuma, the president
of South Africa, plans to renovate his rural home in Nkandla,
KwaZulu-Natal province at an estimated cost of 16.62 million British
pounds.
... Upgrades to Zuma's private residence, include a helipad, underground
living quarters with about 10 air-conditioned rooms, a medical
clinic for the president and his family, houses for security staff,
air force and police units, underground parking, playgrounds and
a visitors' centre.
... Zuma, shares the property with his four current wives and
their children. Taxpayers already maintain two state residences
in Pretoria and Cape Town.
... Newspaper reports in South Africa said public spending on
Zuma's residence dwarfed that for the past presidents FW De Klerk,
Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Zuma's residence was declared
a "national key point", meaning details are secret under
an apartheid-era law."
www.theguardian.com, 2012
"Paul Kagame, the hero
of the official story of Rwanda's genocide, was almost certainly
the biggest war criminal to have emerged from those horrifying
events. Kagame led the Tutsis' main militia, the RPF. He almost
certainly ordered the shooting down of the Rwandan president's
plane, the trigger for a civil war that quickly escalated into
a genocide; on the best estimates, his RPF was responsible for
killing 80% of the 1 million who died inside Rwanda, making the
Hutus, not the Tutsis, the chief victims; and his subsequent decision
to extend the civil war into neighbouring Congo, where many Hutu
civilians had fled to escape the RPF, led to the deaths of up
to 5 million more.
... Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan and many others have
helped to whitewash Paul Kagame's crimes against humanity and
provide a veneer of legitimacy to his current oppressive rule.
Anyone who has threatened to blow the lid, like Carla del Ponte,
the chief prosecutor at the UN's international tribunal on Rwanda,
has been forced out."
Jonathan Cook, 2014
"The perpetrator of the
Rwandan genocide, Paul Kagame, is the President of Rwanda.
Western governments and media have covered up his crimes and praise
him as a great humanitarian who has healed Rwanda and is totally
supported by the people. The truth is that Kagame has proved himself
a worse totalitarian that Hitler, Stalin, and Poll Pot combined.
He has turned Rwanda into a fear-ridden psychological prison.
Paul Kagame is a genocidist who has killed more than five times
as many people as Idi Amin."
Paul Craig Roberts
"The International Criminal
Tribunal on Rwanda indicted 93 Rwandan Hutus, and no Tutsis, for
the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. The court never indicted anyone
for the assassinations of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents
that shattered Rwanda's fragile peace and, by the court's own
admission, started the slaughter.
... During its 20 years in operation, the court indicted 93 Rwandan
Hutus, convicted 61 and spent $2 billion. In 2003, former Chief
Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte announced that she intended to indict
Rwanda's Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, for the assassination of
his predecessor, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, and Burundian
President Cyprien Ntaryamira; but instead, she was summarily fired.
No one was ever indicted for the assassinations, which, by the
ICTR's own admission, shattered a fragile peace and started the
ensuing panic and slaughter of 1994.
... The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) were
really engaged in a political exercise to basically justify the
regime that exists there today, which is a military dictatorship
established by Paul Kagame masquerading as a political structure."
Phil Taylor, radio host of CIUT-Ontario
radio, 2014
"Joseph Mobutu seized power
in the Congo in a military coup in 1965 and quickly established
himself as a dictator at the head of a one-party state. There
is no doubt that the aim of Mobutu was to use the state for the
enrichment of himself and his family. He was a true kleptocrat.
In the 1970s, 15-20% of the operating budget of the state went
directly to Mobutu. In 1977 Mobutu's family took $71 million from
the National Bank for personal use and by the early 1980s his
personal fortune was estimated at $5 billion.
The personal wealth accumulation of Mobutu and his clique destroyed
much of the economy. The nationalization of foreign owned firms,
most of which ended up in the hands of Mobutu and the regime,
was particularly disastrous, destroying what was left of the economy.
... An analysis of the relationship between the Mobutu regime
and foreign aid agencies suggests that aid and foreign financial
support was crucial in propping up the regime."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
"Between 2007 and 2010
at least $32 billion of oil revenue went missing from the Angolan
federal ledger, according to the International Monetary Fund,
which later tracked most of the money to "quasi-fiscal operations."
Angola comes in at 157 out of 176 nations ranked by Transparency
International's Corruption Perceptions Index."
Kerry A. Dolan and Rafael Marques
de Morais, 2013
LATIN AMERICA AND
CARIBBEAN KLEPTOCRATS
Jean-Claude Duvalier-Haiti / Anastasio Somoza-Nicaragua
"Many countries in Africa
and the Caribbean suffer under "kleptocratic" regimes,
where the state is controlled and run for the benefit of an individual,
or a small group, who use their power to transfer a large fraction
of society's resources to themselves. Examples of kleptocratic
regimes include the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire) under
Mobutu Sese Seko, the Dominican Republic under Rafael Trujillo,
Haiti under the Duvaliers, Nicaragua under the Somozas, Uganda
under Idi Amin, Liberia under Charles Taylor, and the Philippines
under Ferdinand Marcos."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier
and James A. Robinson, 2003
"President Bill Clinton
and his cronies had begun to search for a way to continue their
economic stranglehold on the Haiti, and this would include a suitable
Haitian President: specifically, one who would be popular with
the young but lack patriotism. They found their man in the musician
Michel Martelly. His election became a mere formality after an
electoral commission excluded from participation the Fanmi Lavalas
party, which commanded 80 percent of the electorate. Observers
legitimized the results despite countless irregularities and ballots
from only about 20 percent of the electorate. Such are the conditions
under which Michel Martelly was (s)elected President of Haiti."
Dady Chery, 2014
"On November 25, 2014,
tens of thousands poured through the streets of Port-Au-Prince,
Haiti to demand the departure of President Michel Martelly.
Martelly plans to begin ruling by decree on Jan. 12, 2015 when
Parliament expires, because he has held no elections during his
three and a half years in power.
Since Martelly has come to power, he has organized three carnivals
a year and zero elections. He has corrupted state institutions,
particularly the judiciary and Parliament. He replaced elected
mayors with his own hand-picked representatives. Corruption is
unprecedented. Unemployment, inflation and insecurity are all
surging around the country."
Thomas Péralt
"There is no doubt about
the kleptocratic tendencies of Rafael Trujillo. Indeed, relative
to the size of the economy, Trujillo's regime was probably the
most successful case of kleptocratic accumulation in history.
By the end of his regime, the fortune of the Trujillo family was
equal to about 100% of GDP at current prices and the family, controlled
almost 80% of the country's industrial production. About 60% of
the country's labor force depended on him directly or indirectly,
with 45% employed in his firms and another 15% working for the
state."
Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier,
James A. Robinson, 2003
"The giant Caracol Industrial
Park in Haiti was inaugurated in March 2013 in the presence of
President Martelly, as well as "Haitian and foreign diplomats,
the Clinton power couple, millionaires and actors, all present
to celebrate the government's clarion call: 'Haiti is open for
business.
... Caracol was promoted as a way to decentralize the country
and potentially create between 20,000 and 65,000 jobs. The results
one year later are far from expectations. Only 1,388 people work
in the park, and, at the end of the day, most Haitians have only
57 gourdes, or US$1.36, in hand after paying for transportation
and food out of their minimum wage 200-gourde (US$4.75) salary."
Julie Lévesque, 2015
THE KLEPTOCRATIC POWER
STRUCTURE
THE INNER CIRCLE
A CABAL OF THE RICHEST
AND MOST POWERFUL ELITE WHO SET THE AGENDA AND COMMAND THE GLOBAL
ORDER
THE RULING OLIGARCHY
RUN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL
AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM
BILLIONAIRES, CORPORATE
AND BANKING ELITE, DYNASTIC RULING ELITE
THE COUNSELORS
INFORM AND GUIDE THE
INNER CIRCLE AND THE RULING OLIGARCHY
CONSULTANTS, ADVISORS,
LAWYERS, THINK-TANKS, CLUBS AND SOCIETIES, BOARDS OF DIRECTORS
THE ENABLERS
INTELLECTUALS - LEGITIMIZE
THE SYSTEM
ACADEMICS, ECONOMISTS,
HISTORIANS
TECHNOLOGISTS - KEEP
THE SYSTEM WORKING
COMMUNICATONS, SURVEILLANCE
AND COMPUTER SPECIALISTS
PROPAGANDISTS - SELL
THE SYSTEM TO THE PUBLIC
POLITICIANS, CELEBRITY
ELITE, PUNDITS, JOURNALISTS, EDITORS, PRODUCERS, MEDIA OWNERS
ENFORCERS - PROTECT
THE SYSTEM
PENTAGON, POLICE, HOMELAND
SECURITY, FBI, NSA, CIA, SURVEILLANCE SPECIALISTS
DESTROYERS - KILL
FOR THE SYSTEM
MERCENARIES, ASSASSINS,
SPECIAL FORCES, FALSE-FLAG SPECIALISTS, MILITARY COMMANDERS
THE REST
THE BOTTOM 99%
WHAT DOES GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY
LOOK LIKE?
RULE BY A PLUTOCRATIC
ELITE
"When plunder becomes a
way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
Frédéric Bastiat
"The world is controlled
by a small group of sociopaths for their benefit. Consequently
all the systems that we take for granted were designed by them
or manipulated into a form that supports their agenda of exclusive
control and personal benefit.
While it is not hard to imagine different systems and ways of
organizing structures that would be much more equitable, why would
the group that currently controls governments, the issuance of
money, armies, media, energy, medical, education, chemicals, etc.
be interested in accommodating more equitable ways of running
the world?
After all, since they are sociopathic, what does the loss and
suffering of millions or even a billions of "useless eaters"
mean to them. The psychopaths are in charge because a normal human,
who can feel empathy and compassion, cannot compete with a psychopath.
That is why they constantly rise to the top positions of power
and control."
Hugh Tierna, 2014
"The plutocrats who run
our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their
unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople,
ones who could sell wars as humanitarian intervention rather than
profit-driven exercises in death and destruction; the unsustainable
plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation
of wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome
of a free market; the bailouts funded by ordinary taxpayers to
stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary austerity;
and so on.
A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured
salespeople, especially in an age when the elites had persuaded
us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like identities based
on colour or gender mattered far more than class.
Plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right
populist to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer
the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists, divisions that protect
their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist
who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's
power."
Jonathan Cook, 2018
"The continued concentration
of government power into the hands of a few - until it is total
power - is exactly what the world's "super-rich" are
determined to achieve."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"The power elite exploited
national resources, waged economic wars among themselves, entered
into combinations, made private capital out of the public domain,
and used any and every method to achieve their ends. They made
agreements with railroads for rebates; they purchased newspapers
and bought editors; they killed off competing and independent
businesses and employed lawyers of skill and statesmen of repute
to sustain their rights and secure their privileges. There is
something demonic about these lords of creation; it is not merely
rhetoric to call them robber barons."
C. Wright Mills in "The Power
Elite
"In the 1970s, as wages
detached from productivity, the rich progressively got richer.
They used their wealth to reduce taxes on capital, role back critical
regulations, break up the unions, install their own lapdog politicians,
push through trade agreements that pitted US workers against low-paid
labor in the developing world, and induce their shady Central
Bank buddies to keep interest rates locked below the rate of inflation
so they could cream hefty profits off gigantic asset bubbles.
Now, 40 years later, they own the whole shooting match, lock,
stock and barrel. And it's all because management decided to take
the lion's share of productivity gains."
Mike Whitney
"The question is not how
to get good people to rule; the question is how to stop the powerful
from doing as much damage as they can to us."
Karl Popper
"International "aid"
is a well-known capitalist scheme aimed at developing markets
in the global south for businesses from the North. Of course this
"aid" will benefit Haitians. But only the very few elite
ones: those in power and the rich corporate elite. Haiti's open
for business and deluxe hotels will be welcoming businessmen so
they can set up their sweat shops in a cool and luxurious environment."
Julie Lévesque
"Kleptocracy is a word
that's usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa,
Latin America or Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic
strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the
fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or
squeezed from their country's natural resources."
William J. Astore
"Corporate capitalism,
which has destroyed our democracy, has given unchecked power to
the uber-rich. And once we understand the pathologies of these
oligarchic elites, it is easy to chart our future. The state apparatus
the uber-rich controls now exclusively serves their interests.
They are deaf to the cries of the dispossessed. They empower those
institutions that keep us oppressed-the security and surveillance
systems of domestic control, militarized police, Homeland Security
and the military-and gut or degrade those institutions or programs
that blunt social, economic and political inequality, among them
public education, health care, welfare, Social Security, an equitable
tax system, food stamps, public transportation and infrastructure,
and the courts. The uber-rich extract greater and greater sums
of money from those they steadily impoverish. And when citizens
object or resist, they crush or kill them."
Chris Hedges, 2018
"It makes no difference
which party is in power; whether a Democrat or Republican Administration,
the Rockefeller people hold the key positions, especially in the
fields of foreign policy and finance. The House of Rockefeller
is the eternal power.
... To the Rockefellers, socialism is not a system for redistributing
wealth - especially not for redistributing their wealth - but
a system to control people and competitors. Socialism puts power
in the hands of the government. And since the Rockefellers control
the governments, government control means Rockefeller control."
Gary Allen
"Over the course of the
past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to kleptocracy (a
government ruled by thieves), and representative government has
been rejected in favor of a government run by the most unprincipled
citizens that panders to the worst vices in our nature: greed,
violence, hatred, prejudice and war, ruled by career politicians,
corporations and thieves-individuals and entities with little
regard for the rights of American citizens."
John Whitehead, 2018
"The shaping of the will
of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become
a privilege reserved to the 20% of the population that holds 93%
of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the
banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose
the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic
foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports
arenas."
Lewis H. Lapham
"In the world of globalization,
families cooperate, compete, and perhaps even conspire against
and with each other or themselves. They keep the politics of dynastic
power from being understood or contemplated by the masses. We
are distracted with sports, entertainment, 'royal weddings', a
fear of foreigners and terrorism, and are blinded and manipulated
by a deeply embedded propaganda system."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"When a majority of citizens
disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests,
they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo
bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large
majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do
not get it."
from a research study at Princeton
and Northwestern University (2014)
"The upward distribution
of wealth is the natural corollary of decades of aggressive lobbying,
government infiltration, and political arm-twisting. Ruling elites
are a like-minded bunch who know what they want and will stop
nothing until they get it. The system has been effectively restructured
to serve their needs and those of their constituents. They alone
control the levers of state power as well as the marionette politicians
who do their bidding."
Mike Whitney
"There is no force within
ruling institutions that will halt the pillage by the uber-rich
of the nation and the ecosystem. The uber-rich have nothing to
fear from the corporate-controlled media, the elected officials
they bankroll or the judicial system they have seized. The universities
are pathetic corporation appendages. They silence or banish intellectual
critics who upset major donors by challenging the reigning ideology
of neoliberalism, which was formulated by the uber-rich to restore
class power. The uber-rich have destroyed popular movements, including
labor unions, along with democratic mechanisms for reform that
once allowed working people to pit power against power. The world
is now their playground."
Chris Hedges, 2018
"If big government is good
for cartels, then bigger government is better, and total government
is best. It is for this reason that, throughout their entire history,
cartels have been found to be the behind-the-scenes promoters
of every conceivable form of totalitarianism. They supported the
Nazis in Germany; they embraced the Fascists in Italy; they financed
the Bolsheviks they in Russia. And they are the driving force
behind that nameless totalitarianism that increasingly becomes
a grim reality in the United States of America."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"What is at hand isn't
so much about lofty ideals. It's not about Socialism. It's not
about Capitalism. It's not about Communism. It's not about being
a progressive, a conservative or a liberal. It's not about left
vs right... It's much more fundamental than all of that. Quite
simply, it's about People vs. Power, that's it, nothing more.
Those that have and wield institutional power, and those that
do not.
... Take a good look around, I defy you to point to a single socioeconomic
construct in our supposedly enlightened and advanced society of
today which is not essentially determined by that crude polarizing
characterization. Whether it be our bought and paid for Political
Class, our rapacious Banking Sector, our completely captured Regulators,
our entitled Multinational Corporations, our entrenched Governmental
Agencies, our marauding Military Industrial Complex, our fleecing
Healthcare Providers, our muzzled Free Press, our hijacked Justice
System, or our grossly overpaid CEOs, Athletes, and Entertainers,
they all have one thing in common. What they seek above all else
is to expand existing institutional dominion and their own privileges
within it."
Bruno de Landevoisin, 2014
"The global super-elite
are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in
common with one another than with their countrymen back home.
Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong,
Moscow or Mumbai, today's super-rich are increasingly a nation
unto themselves."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"It is no use trying to
escape their arrogance by submission or good behavior. Robbers
of the world, having by universal plunder exhausted the land,
their drive is greed. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious;
if poor, they lust for domination. Neither rule of the East nor
West can satisfy them. Alone among men, they crave with equal
eagerness poverty and riches. To plunder, slaughter, seize with
false pretenses, they give the lying name 'empire.' And where
nothing remains but a desert, they call that 'peace.'"
Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania
"The public good has been,
and is today, used as a device and an excuse for self-aggrandizement
by an elitist circle that pleads for world peace and human decency...
These same international interests and promoters are always willing
to determine what other people should do, but are signally unwilling
to be first in line to give up their own wealth and power. Their
mouths are open, their pockets are closed."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"
"One percent of the population
owns more than seventy percent of the nation's industry, and ten
percent own all of it. About half of this, in turn, is held in
trust by the ten leading Wall Street banks, which, in turn, are
heavily influenced, if not controlled outright, by a group so
small that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. This
represents the greatest and most intense concentration of wealth
and power that the world has ever seen."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"Ruling elites are a like-minded
bunch who know what they want and will stop nothing until they
get it. The system has been effectively restructured to serve
their needs and those of their constituents. They alone control
the levers of state power as well as the marionette politicians
who do their bidding."
Mike Whitney
"Our elites - the ones
in Congress, the ones on Wall Street, and the ones being produced
at prestigious universities and business schools - do not have
the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make
it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they
have received, of how to replace a failed system with a new one.
They are petty, timid, and uncreative bureaucrats superbly trained
to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions
that will satisfy the corporate structure. Their entire focus
is numbers, profits, and personal advancement. They lack a moral
and intellectual core. They are as able to deny gravely ill people
medical coverage to increase company profits as they are to use
taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked
dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their
balance sheets. The democratic system, they believe, is a secondary
product of the free market-which they slavishly serve.
... Our power elite has a blind belief in a decaying political
and financial system that has nurtured, enriched, and empowered
it. But the elite cannot solve our problems. It has been trained
only to find solutions, such as paying out trillions of dollars
of taxpayer money to bail out banks and financial firms, to sustain
a dead system. The elite, and those who work for them, were never
taught how to question the assumptions of their age. The socially
important knowledge and cultural ideas embodied in history, literature,
philosophy, and religion, which are at their core subversive and
threatening to authority, have been banished from public discourse.
... The elite as well as those equipped with narrow, specialized
vocational skills, know only how to feed the beast until it dies.
Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save
us. They don't know how. They do not even know how to ask the
questions. And when it all collapses, when our rotten financial
system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our
imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will
be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded as the rest
of us."
Chris Hedges
CENTRAL BANK CONTROL
OF ECONOMIES
"Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild's
five sons were sent to the major capitals of Europe - London,
Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples - with the mission of establishing
a banking system that would be outside government control. The
economic and political systems of nations would be controlled
not by citizens but by bankers, for the benefit of bankers. Eventually,
a privately-owned "central bank" was established In
nearly every country. This central banking system has now gained
control over the economies of the world. Central banks have the
authority to print money in their respective countries, and it
is from these banks that governments must borrow money to pay
their debts and fund their operations. The result is a global
economy in which not only industry but government itself runs
on "credit" (or debt) created by a banking monopoly
headed by a network of private central banks."
"Central banking functions on the expansion and creation
of money and debt, which is lent at interest, thus serving as
the source of income for the central banking system."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Powerful private families
decide who controls the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England,
the Bank of Japan and even the European Central Bank. Money is
in their hands to destroy or create. Their aim is the ultimate
control over future life on this planet, a supremacy earlier dictators
and despots only ever dreamt of."
F. William Engdahl
"Central banks control
the monetary system of the world and determine when business cycles
are going to change simply by increasing or decreasing the money
supply in the banking system."
Joan Veon
"Eventually international
bankers owned as private corporations the central banks of the
various European nations. The Bank of England, Bank of France
and Bank of Germany were not owned by their respective governments,
as almost everyone imagines, but were privately owned monopolies
granted by the heads of state, usually in return for loans."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"International financiers
want a completely centralized global economic structure, including
a single currency system, the eventual removal of physical currency
to be replaced with more easily controlled digital currency, and
ultimately a central authority for global economic governance.
In the pursuit of a "New World Order," they must destroy
the structure of the "old world"."
zerohedge.com, 2016
"Bank for International
Settlements (BIS) was part of a plan to create a world system
of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political
system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole...to
be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of
the world acting in concert by secret agreements."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy
and Hope"
"In the 1920s, the Governor
of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Governor of the
Bank of England, decided to use the financial power of Britain
and the United States to force all the major countries to operate
through central banks, free from all political control, with all
questions of international finance to be settled by agreements
by such central banks without interference from governments. These
men were not working for the governments and nations of whom they
purportedly represented, but were the technicians and agents of
the dominant investment bankers of their own countries."
Andrew Gavin Marshall in his book
"Global Power and Global Government"
"The private issuance of
a nation's money has given tremendous power to central bankers,
a power so great that even democratically elected governments
are subservient to them. Governments are not in control of the
economy; it is the all-powerful banksters who create the money,
determine interest rates, and decide who gets loans and who doesn't."
Gabriel Donohoe
"An overview of all wars
since the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 suggests
that most of them would have been greatly reduced in severity,
or perhaps not even fought at all, without fiat money. It is the
ability of governments to acquire money without direct taxation
that makes modern warfare possible, and a central bank has become
the preferred method of accomplishing that."
G. Edward Griffin in his book "The
Creature from Jekyll Island"
"The Bank of International
Settlements [BIS] is where all of the world's central banks meet
to analyze the global economy and determine what course of action
they will take next to put more money in their pockets, since
they control the amount of money in circulation and how much interest
they are going to charge governments and banks for borrowing from
them. When you understand that the BIS pulls the strings of the
world's monetary system, you then understand that they have the
ability to create a financial boom or bust in a country. If that
country is not doing what the money lenders want, then all they
have to do is sell its currency."
Joan Veon
"BIS regulations serve
only the single purpose of strengthening the international private
banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The IMF
and the international banks regulated by the BIS are a team: the
international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies
to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a
carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy,
then the international banks come as vulture investors in the
name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital
inadequate and insolvent by the BIS."
economist Henry CK Lui
"Central banks are integral
to the modern fiat monetary system, and the power and influence
invested in this role is such that central banks, and, more importantly,
those who control them, have an immense impact on human affairs.
The evolution of the banking system from earliest times has involved
not only empirical, accidental modifications, but also a secret,
concerted, plan to create a financial system of supremely corrupting
and corruptible capacity."
"Bank of England" from
www.overlordsofchaos.com/
"Eight families - only
four of which reside in the US. - have 80% ownership of the New
York Federal Reserve Bank, by far the most powerful Fed branch.
They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs
of New York; the Rothschild's of Paris and London; the Lazards
of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome."
J. W. McCallister, an oil industry
insider with House of Saud connections
"The Federal Reserve is
commonly called the "Fed," confusing it with the U.S.
government; but it is actually a private corporation. It is so
private that its stock is not even traded on the stock exchange.
The government doesn't own it. You and I can't own it. It is owned
by a consortium of private banks, the biggest of which are Citibank
and J. P. Morgan Chase Company. These two megabanks are the financial
cornerstones of the empires built by J. P. Morgan and John D.
Rockefeller, the "Robber Barons" who orchestrated the
Federal Reserve Act in 1913."
Ellen Hodgson Brown in her book
"Web of Debt"
"The Federal Reserve Banks
create money out of thin air to buy Government bonds from the
United States Treasury, lending money into circulation at interest,
by bookkeeping entries... Where does the Federal Reserve system
get the money with which to create Bank Reserves? Answer. It doesn't
get the money, it creates it. When the Federal Reserve writes
a check, it is creating money. The Federal Reserve is a total
moneymaking machine."
Congressman Wright Patman House
Banking and Currency Committee, 1964
"The establishment of the
Federal Reserve (1913) ensured that the United States would become
indebted to and owned by international banking interests, and
thus, act in their interest. The Fed financed the US role in World
War I, provided the credit for speculation, which led to the Great
Depression and massive consolidation for the interests that own
the Federal Reserve System. It then financed US entry into World
War II."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy
and Hope"
"When the federal government needs more money, the Federal
Reserve does not merely create and print it as it would do were
it a government agency. No, the Federal Reserve creates it as
a loan and charges the government interest on it."
U.S. State Senator Jack Metcalf
"The central banking system
has been the most powerful network of institutions in the world;
it has reigned supreme over the capitalist world order, almost
since its inception. Central banks are the perfect merger of private
interests and public power.
Central banks work behind the scenes; their weapons are the financial
instruments they create and employ. With the stroke of a pen,
they can destroy a nation and bankrupt a people."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"It must not be felt that
these heads of the world's chief central banks were substantive
powers in world finance. They were not. Rather, they were technicians
and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries,
who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing
them down."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy
And Hope"
"The Federal Reserve System
is in effect a private banking monopoly, not answerable to Congress
or the public, but with legal monopoly control over money supply."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and FDR"
"A cartel of the most powerful
international banks - the current primary dealers of the Federal
Reserve System... together with hedge funds and their other buy-side
buddies, have power over nations... These cartel banks work to
expand their territorial control beyond their national borders
to put other populations in debt... The eventual end state of
this dynamic is one integrated, global banking empire. It's only
a matter of time before their collective balance sheets (plus
the large Chinese banks now that the cartel is colluding with
them) control the rest of the world."
Damon Vrabel
"States, most especially
the large hegemonic ones, such as the United States and Great
Britain, are controlled by the international central banking system,
working through secret agreements at the Bank for International
Settlements (BIS), and operating through national central banks
(such as the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve)... The same
international banking cartel that controls the United States today
previously controlled Great Britain and held it up as the international
hegemon. When the British order faded, and was replaced by the
United States, the US ran the global economy. However, the same
interests are served. States will be used and discarded at will
by the international banking cartel; they are simply tools."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"There are six major banks
in the U.S. at the present time, and they control most of the
stock of the Federal Reserve System. The Rockefeller family has
large blocks of stock in two of the major banks: J.P. Morgan Chase
and Citigroup. The Rothschild family has a controlling interest
in two major banks and significant holdings in the other major
banks through the Barclay Bank and the State Street Bank. Why
is that important? Two families control the major banks, the major
banks control the FED, and the FED controls the U.S. economy."
Stanley Monteith
"Powerful private families
decide who controls the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England,
the Bank of Japan and even the European Central Bank. Money is
in their hands to destroy or create. Their aim is the ultimate
control over future life on this planet, a supremacy earlier dictators
and despots only ever dreamt of."
F. William Engdahl
"Central banks have utilized
and promoted wars for their own profit, starting with the Rothschild
involvement with the Napoleonic wars, and continuing up to the
present day."
G. Edward Griffin in his book "The
Creature from Jekyll Island"
"The first step in having
a Central Bank established in a country is to get them to accept
an outrageous loans, which puts the country in debt of the Central
Bank and under the control of the Rothschilds. If the country
does not accept the loan, the leader of this particular country
will be assassinated and a Rothschild aligned leader will be put
into the position, and if the assassination does not work, the
country will be invaded and have a Central Bank established with
force all under the name of terrorism."
www.godlikeproductions.com, 10/23/11
"The most vital and powerful
force within the capitalist global political economy is the central
banking system... the central banking system, is also the source
of the greatest wealth and power, essentially managing capitalism
- controlling the credit and debt of both government and industry."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research
"The private issuance of
a nation's money has given tremendous power to central bankers,
a power so great that even democratically elected governments
are subservient to them. Governments are not in control of the
economy; it is the all-powerful banksters who create the money,
determine interest rates, and decide who gets loans and who doesn't."
Gabriel Donohoe
"Central banks control
the monetary system of the world and determine when business cycles
are going to change simply by increasing or decreasing the money
supply in the banking system."
Joan Veon in an article "Who
Runs The World And Controls The Value Of Assets?"
"Eventually international
bankers owned as private corporations the central banks of the
various European nations. The Bank of England, Bank of France
and Bank of Germany were not owned by their respective governments,
as almost everyone imagines, but were privately owned monopolies
granted by the heads of state, usually in return for loans."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The Chairman of the Federal
Reserve has one essential mandate: to preserve the power of the
big banks."
F. William Engdahl
"The Rothschilds have a
majority stake in nearly all the central banks in the world."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT
"For George Orwell, the
state was organized through traditional forms of authoritarian
political power. What Orwell could not have imagined was the reconfiguration
of the state under a form of corporate sovereignty in which corporations,
the financial elite, and the ultra-rich completely controlled
the state and its modes of governance. Hyper-capitalism was no
longer merely protected by the state, it has become the state.
"
Henry Giroux
"The technotronic era involves
the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society
would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.
Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance
over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing
even the most personal information about the citizen. These files
will be subject to instantaneous retrieve/review by the authorities."
National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote in 1970
"Over the past few decades
America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy
into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power. A Princeton
University study concludes that rich, well-connected individuals
on the political scene now steer the direction of the country,
regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters."
www.talkingpointsmemo.com, 2014
"The central point that
emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized
groups representing business interests have substantial independent
impacts on U.S. government policy while mass-based interest groups
and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page,
Princeton University study researchers, 2014
"[The National Security
Agency's monitoring capability] at any time could be turned around
on the American people and no American would have any privacy
left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone
conversations, telegrams, it ç doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny,
if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological
capacity that the intelligence community has given the government
could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no
way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine
together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately
it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such
is the capability of this technology... I know the capability
that is there to make tyranny total in America."
Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence
in 1975
"At no period in American
history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility
of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate
consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard
of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality.
Chris Hedges
"The term oligarch is reserved
for those with extreme wealth who also want to control the political
process, policy levers and most other aspects of the lives of
the citizenry in a top-down tyrannical and undemocratic manner.
They think they know best about pretty much everything, and believe
unelected technocrats who share their worldview should be empowered
so that they can unilaterally make all of society's important
decisions. The unwashed masses in their minds are unnecessary
distractions who must to be told what to do - useless eaters who
need to be brainwashed into worshipping the oligarch mindset,
or turned into apathetic automatons incapable or unwilling to
engage in critical thought."
Michael Krieger
"The most immediate challenge
to Plutonomy comes from the political process. Ultimately, the
rise in income and wealth inequality to some extent is an economic
disenfranchisement of the masses to the benefit of the few. However
in democracies this is rarely tolerated forever.
... We see the biggest threat to plutonomy as coming from a rise
in political demands to reduce income inequality, spread the wealth
more evenly, and challenge forces such as globalization which
have benefited profit and wealth growth."
from a Citigroup Plutonomy symposium,
2006
"Politics and power are
now on the side of lawlessness as is evident in the U.S. government's
endless violations of civil liberties, freedom of speech, and
the most constitutional rights, mostly done in the name of national
security. Lawlessness wraps itself in repressive government policies
such as the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act,
Military Commissions, and a host of other legal illegalities.
These would include the "right of the president "to
order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied
with terrorists", use secret evidence to detain individuals
indefinitely, develop a massive surveillance panoptican to monitor
every communication used by citizens who have not committed a
crime, employ state torture against those considered enemy combatants,
and block the courts from prosecuting those officials who commit
such heinous crimes. The ruling corporate elites have made terror
rational and fear the modus operandi of politics."
Henry Giroux
"The top .01 percent in
America have been investing their money in politics. And these
investments have been changing the game.
In the 2012 election cycle donations from the top .01 accounted
for over 40 percent of all campaign contributions.
The richest .01 percent haven't been donating out of the goodness
of their hearts. They've donated out of goodness to their wallets.
Their political investments have paid off in the form of lower
taxes on themselves and their businesses, subsidies for their
corporations, government bailouts, federal prosecutions that end
in settlements where companies don't affirm or deny the facts
and where executives don't go to jail, watered-down regulations,
and non-enforcement of antitrust laws.
If you want to know what's happened to the American economy, follow
the money. That will lead you to the richest .01 percent.
And if you want to know what's happened to our democracy, follow
the richest .01 percent. They'll lead you to the politicians who
have been selling our democracy."
Robert Reich
"Wealth and political power
are so dramatically concentrated in this country that elections
have become a bitter farce. The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court
case essentially enabled corporations and billionaires to be able
buy US elections and politicians.
... Meanwhile, most voters are left disempowered on the sidelines,
pawns in elections that are largely fueled by clandestine corporate
money."
Bejamin Dangl
"The US today is ruled
by an oligarchy of private interests. The US government is not
independent of the powerful interest groups that fund political
campaigns. The US ceased being a democracy during the Clinton
administration."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
"One document from the
Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012 ... revealed that the agency
[NSA] has been monitoring the online activities of individuals
it believes express "radical" ideas and who have a "radicalising"
influence on others.
The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals
is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror
plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are
deemed "radical", a term that warrants pervasive surveillance
and destructive campaigns to "exploit vulnerabilities"."
Glenn Greenwald in his book "No
Place To Hide"
"What exists in the United
States today is fundamentally a new mode of politics, one wedded
to a notion of power removed from accountability of any kind...
The collapse of the public into the private, the depoliticization
of the citizenry in the face of an egregious celebrity culture,
and the disabling of education as a critical public sphere, makes
it easier for neoliberal capital with its hatred of democracy
and celebration of the market to render its ideologies, values,
and practices as a matter of common sense, removed from critical
inquiry and dissent."
Henry Giroux
"Capital market liberalization-free
and unfettered movement of capital across borders-can, in some
sense, undermine democracy. Some developing countries have experienced
this very strongly: When a Wall Street-oriented party loses the
election, the markets become unhappy and start pulling their capital
out. And because voters know this, they worry about Wall Street's
reactions. Wall Street votes as much as the people of the country.
The interesting thing is that some markets, like Korea, do not
need the money from Wall Street because their people have saved
enough on their own. They've linked their market to the global
system, so that the people in the country with money can move
their money to Wall Street and the people from Wall Street can
move the money into and out of the country freely. Liberalizing
capital markets - making it easier for those on Wall Street to
move their money in and out of the country-gives more voting power
to Wall Street."
David Rothkopf
"Karl Polanyi warned that
without heavy government regulation and oversight, unfettered
and unregulated capitalism degenerates into a Mafia capitalism
and a Mafia political system."
Chris Hedges
"The quaint notion that
the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic
or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago... The USA
is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy."
Mike Krieger, 2015
"47 individuals in the U.S.
own more than all 160 million Americans below the median wealth
level of about $53,000.
... As of November 8, 2014 just 43 individuals own as much as
the bottom half of America [based on the Credit Suisse Global
Wealth Databook (GWD)].
... The top 0.01% of Americans now owns as much as the bottom
90%.
www.washingtonsblog.com
"Majorities of the American
public actually have little influence over the policies our government
adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic
governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association,
and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, if policymaking
is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number
of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic
society are seriously threatened."
from a research study at Princeton
and Northwestern University (2014)
"The fossil fuel companies,
megabanks, and defense industries such as Boeing, General dynamics
Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin now control the major seats
of political power and the commanding institutions necessary to
insure that the deeply anti-democratic state rule in the interests
of the few while exploiting and repressing the many."
Henry Giroux
"The first truth is that
the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate
the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger
than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism-ownership
of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling
private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message
to Congress on Curbing Monopolies.", 1938
"When George Orwell wrote
"1984" (1948), he probably never thought that the "totalitarian,
bureaucratic world" that he imagined would ever actually
become a reality. But that is precisely what is happening. We
live at a time when the United States' government monitors billions
of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about
it. We live at a time when corporations systematically collect
our voice-prints and our televisions watch us. We live at a time
when reporters that try to dig into the misdeeds of the government
have their computers hacked, and when nearly one out of every
three Americans has a file in the FBI's master criminal database.
The control freaks that run our society are absolutely obsessed
with watching, tracking, recording and monitoring virtually everything
that we do. We truly are becoming a "1984" society,
... Even though we are not in prison, we are being systematically
trained to act as if we were. Our police forces are being increasingly
militarized, and all law enforcement authorities are now trained
to bark orders at the general public and treat them like dirt.
Most of the population fears those in authority these days, and
that is precisely how those in power want it."
Michael Snyder
"The most outrageous of
the FBI's activities was its COINTELPRO operation, which the Bureau
admitted it had conducted for fifteen years, between 1956 and
1971. Under this program, a secret arm of the United States government,
using taxpayers' funds, harassed American citizens and disrupted
their organizations, using a wide variety of covert techniques."
David Wise
"A Princeton University scientific
study analyzed policies passed by the U.S. government from 1981
to 2002 and discovered that vast majority of such policies had
nothing to do with the needs and voiced interests of the American
people The study made clear that the opinions of the public per
se simply do not count. The study concluded that rather than being
a democracy the United States had become an oligarchy where power
is effectively wielded by the rich, the well connected and the
politically powerful, as well as particularly well placed individuals
in institutions like banking and finance or the military."
Henry Giroux
"There are powerful corporate
entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth, arrayed
against us. They are waiting for a moment to strike, a national
crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security
and moral renewal, to take complete control. The tools are in
place. These antidemocratic forces, which will seek to make an
alliance with the radical Christian Right and other extremists,
will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the
specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian
controls to extinguish our democracy. And while they do it, they
will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans,
promising law and order, and clutching the Christian cross."
Chris Hedges
CORPORATE HEGEMONY
"Corporations have captured
every major institution, including the judicial, legislative and
executive branches of government, and deformed them to exclusively
serve the demands of the market. They have, in the process, demolished
civil society."
Chris Hedges
"We don't consider ourselves
basically an American company. We are a multi-national company.
And when we approach a government that doesn't like the U.S.,
we always say, 'Who do you like? Britain? Germany? We carry a
lot of flags'."
Robert Stevenson, former vice-president
of the Ford Motor Company, quoted in Business Week, December 19,
1970
"Nearly half of all World
Bank financing goes directly to the multinational corporations
that are the real beneficiaries of 'foreign aid' and 'development
assistance'."
George Draffan
"Power lies with the corporations.
These corporations, not we, pick who runs for president, Congress,
judgeships, and most state legislatures. You cannot, in most instances,
be a viable candidate without their blessing and money. These
corporations, including the Commission on Presidential Debates
(a private organization), determine who gets to speak and what
issues candidates can or cannot challenge, from universal, not-for-profit,
single-payer health care to Wall Street bailouts to NAFTA."
Chris Hedges
"The growth of the corporate
war economy represents the logical outgrowth of a capitalist system
which values "profits over people," and has contributed
to the erosion of democracy."
Jeremy Kuzmarov
"By the time Ronald Reagan,
imitating Margaret Thatcher, pledged to "get government off
the back of the people", the only "people" who
counted were corporations and those in thrall to them."
T. P. Wilkinson
"The well-paid television
pundits and news celebrities, the economists and the banking and
financial sector leaders, see the world from inside the comfort
of the corporate box. They are loyal to the corporate state. They
cling to the corporation and the corporate structure. It is known.
It is safe. It is paternal. It is the system."
Chris Hedges
"In the largest and most
sophisticated multinational corporations, planning and subsequent
monitoring of plan fulfillment have reached a scope and level
of detail that, ironically, resemble more than superficially the
national planning procedures of Communist countries."
United States Tariff Commission,
in its report to the Senate, 1973
"The biggest social responsibility
of any CEO is to maintain and ensure the successful and profitable
future of his enterprise.
... The main argument for the 35-hour week was that there was
a certain amount of work and it would be better if we worked less
and distributed the work amongst more people. That has proved
quite clearly to be wrong.
... I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be positive about
the future. We've never had it so good, we've never had so much
money, we've never been so healthy, we've never lived as long
as we do today. We have everything we want and we still go around
as if we were in mourning for something."
former Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck
"The global corporatocracy
is almost fully operational. The intentions of those negotiating
the multiple trade treaties are now crystal clear: to place complete
power and control over our economies in the hands of the largest
global corporations,
... The main driver of this change are the bilateral and multilateral
trade and investment treaties being negotiated in complete secrecy
and behind closed doors between corporate lobbyists, free trade
activists and our own elected "representatives" (a term
I use in the loosest possible sense, especially given the context).
The ultimate goal of these treaties is to reconfigure the legal
apparatus and superstructures that govern national, regional and
global trade and business - for the primary, if not exclusive,
benefit of the world's largest multinational corporations."
Don Quijones
"Ninety percent of the
800 largest U.S. corporations are interlocked in a continuous
network, with any one corporation within a few steps of any other
corporation in the network.
... Corporations dominate public policy making via lobbying, formal
advisory committees, political campaign financing, and a constantly
revolving door between business and government. "
George Draffan
"The corporate forces that
control the state will never permit real reform. It would mean
their extinction. These corporations, especially the oil and gas
industry, will never allow us to achieve energy independence.
That would devastate their profits. It would wipe out tens of
billions of dollars in weapons contracts. It would cripple the
financial health of a host of private contractors."
Chris Hedges
"Full investigation of the
Enron scandal would have proven once and for all that there is
almost no one in the US Congress not owned by some corporation."
T. P. Wilkinson
"The fossil fuel companies,
megabanks, and defense industries such as Boeing, General dynamics
Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin now control the major seats
of political power and the commanding institutions necessary to
insure that the deeply anti-democratic state rule in the interests
of the few while exploiting and repressing the many."
Henry Giroux
"When no more money or exports
can be squeezed from the poor, selling state-owned companies to
Northern corporations becomes an option... Once again, a handful
of multinational corporations are the beneficiaries."
George Draffan
"Corporations are ubiquitous
parts of our lives, and those that own and run them want them
to remain that way. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes.
We drive in corporate cars. We buy our fuel from corporations.
We borrow from, invest our retirement savings with, and take out
college loans with corporations and corporate banks. We are entertained,
informed, and bombarded with advertisements by corporations. Many
of us work for corporations. There are few aspects of life left
that have not been taken over by corporations, from mail delivery
to public utilities to our for-profit health-care system. These
corporations have no loyalty to the country or workers. Our impoverishment
feeds their profits. And profits, for corporations, are all that
count."
Chris Hedges
MONOPOLY CAPITALISM
"Competition is a sin."
John D. Rockefeller
"What drives America today
is, in fact, business. But it's not the fair-minded "free
enterprise" system . It's a rigged system of crony capitalism
that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other
country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy."
William J. Astore
"In the late 19th and early
20th centuries, the railroad owners wanted state control of railroads
in order to preserve their monopoly and abolish competition."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"
"If you wanted to control
the nation's manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation
and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex,
the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then
you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"Corporations hold a near
monopoly on all electronic and printed sources of information.
A few media giants, such as AOL/Time Warner, General Electric,
Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch's NewsGroup, control nearly
everything we read, see, and hear."
Chris Hedges
"These are the rules of
big business... Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and
remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative
grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than
a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor,
either mental or physical, for its exploitation."
Frederick C. Howe. "Confessions
of a Monopolist" (1906)
"John D. Rockefeller was
definitely convinced that the competitive system under which the
world had operated was a mistake. It was a crime against order,
efficiency, economy. It could be eliminated only by abolishing
all rivals. His plan, therefore, took a solid form. He would bring
all his rivals in with him. The strong ones he would bring in
as partners. The others would come in as stockholders. Those who
would not come in would be crushed."
John Flynn in his book "God's
Gold The Story of Rockefeller and His Times", 1932
"The German fascist state
was a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism. Its 'fascism' was that
of business enterprise organized on a monopoly basis and in full
command of all the military, police, legal and propaganda power
of the state."
economist Robert Brady
"By the late nineteenth
century the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the
most efficient way to gain an unchallenged monopoly was to "go
political" and make society go to work for the monopolists
- under the name of the public good and the public interest."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"
"In the public eye were
the great Titans of the new business era, the coal and meat "barons"
and the copper, railway, steel, and other "kings," men
of the type of the elder J.P. Morgan, of James J. Hill, William
H. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Frick, William H. Clark, and Rockefeller.
Such men had certain broad traits in common, differ as they might
from each other as individuals. They were men of wide economic
but intensely narrow social vision, and of colossal driving power
and iron wills. They could lay their economic plans with imperial
vision in time and space, but for the effect of their acts on
society they cared nothing whatever. They claimed the right to
rule the economic destinies of the people in any way that would
enure their own personal advantage. Illogically, they insisted
upon the theory of laissez-faire for all except themselves, while
they demanded and received every favor they wished in the way
of special privileges from the government. The whole machinery
of government must be at their disposal when desired - legislation,
court decisions, and Federal troops. They combined their business
units into "trusts" and combinations of almost unlimited
power, yet they insisted on "freedom of contract" when
dealing with labor, whose organization in any form they almost
wholly refused to sanction."
James Truslow Adams, 1940
"The first truth is that
the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate
the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger
than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism-ownership
of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling
private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message
to Congress on Curbing Monopolies.", 1938
"Big government with its
capacity to regulate every facet of economic life, is the natural
friend and ally of cartels and monopolies."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"The monopoly which the
international financiers most covet is control over a nation's
money."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"Monopoly laws are born
in corruption. The commercialism of the press, or education, even
of sweet charity, is part of the price we pay for the special
privileges created by law. The desire of something for nothing,
of making the other fellow pay, of monopoly in some form or other,
is the cause of corruption. Monopoly and corruption are cause
and effect. Together, they work in Congress, in our Commonwealths,
in our municipalities. It is always so. It always has been so.
Privilege gives birth to corruption, just as the poisonous sewer
breeds disease. Equal chance, a fair field and no favors, the
"square deal" are never corrupt. They do not appear
in legislative halls nor in Council Chambers. For these things
mean labor for labor, value for value, something for something.
This is why the little business man, the retail and wholesale
dealer, the jobber, and the manufacturer are not the business
men whose business corrupts politics."
Frederick Howe, in his 1906 booklet
"Confessions of a Monopolist"
"A syndicate of Wall Street
financiers enlarged their monopoly ambitions and broadened horizons
on a global scale. The gigantic Russian market was to be converted
into a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by
a few high-powered American financiers and the corporations under
their control."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"
"Eventually international
bankers owned as private corporations the central banks of the
various European nations. The Bank of England, Bank of France
and Bank of Germany were not owned by their respective governments,
as almost everyone imagines, but were privately owned monopolies
granted by the heads of state, usually in return for loans."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"John D. Rockefeller and
his 19th century fellow-capitalists were convinced of one absolute
truth: that no great monetary wealth could be accumulated under
the impartial rules of a competitive laissez faire society. The
only sure road to the acquisition of massive wealth was monopoly:
drive out your competitors, reduce competition, eliminate laissez-faire,
and above all get state protection for your industry through compliant
politicians and government regulation. This last avenue yields
a legal monopoly, and a legal monopoly always leads to wealth."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and FDR"
"The "super-rich"
do not fear the progressive taxation scheme that oppresses the
middle class. Their political influence enables them to set up
elaborate tax-exempt foundations to preserve and multiply their
great wealth with virtually no tax at all. This is why monopolists
can never be true capitalists."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"Corporate socialism is
a system where those few who hold the legal monopolies of financial
and industrial control profit at the expense of all others in
society."
Frederick Howe, in his 1906 booklet
"Confessions of a Monopolist"
"Corporate socialism is
the political way of running an economy that is more attractive
to big business because it avoids the rigors and the imposed efficiency
of a market system... Through business control or influence in
regulatory agencies and the police power of the state, the political
system is an effective way to gain a monopoly, and a legal monopoly
always leads to wealth."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and FDR"
"One must draw the distinction
between competitive free enterprise ... and cartel capitalism
dominated by industrial monopolists and international bankers.
The difference is the private enterpriser operates by offering
products and services in a competitive free market while the cartel
capitalist uses the government to force the public to do business
with him."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The objective of the financial
elite is monopoly acquisition of wealth - corporate socialism.
It thrives on the political process, and it would fade away if
it were exposed to the activity of a free market."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and FDR"
"Monopolists never can
be free-enterprise capitalists. Without exception, they embrace
either socialism or some other form of collectivism, because these
represent the ultimate monopoly. These government-sponsored monopolies
are tolerated by their citizens because they assume that, by the
magic of the democratic process and the power of their vote, somehow,
it is they who are the benefactors. This might be true if they
took the trouble to become informed on such matters, and if they
had independent and honest candidates from which to choose, and
if the political parties were not dominated by the super-rich,
and if it were possible for men to win elections without vast
sums of campaign money."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"Until the 1980s, the basic
philosophy of corporate America was 'retain and reinvest'. Corporate
survival and prosperity depended on plowing back most of a corporation's
profits into increased worker wages and training, research and
development, and new plant and equipment. Banks provided loans
for expansion and for mergers, but stringent New Deal regulations
kept high finance in check. From WWII until 1980, there was no
wage premium to be gained by working on Wall Street, and the wage
gap between CEOs and the average worker hovered at about 20 to
1.
Then came financial deregulation, and Wall Street escaped its
New Deal shackles. Almost immediately a new crop of financiers
emerged who raised large sums of money to buy up companies. Instead
of creating new value within the corporation, the fundamental
goal of these corporate raiders (now called private equity and
hedge fund managers) was to extract value away from the corporation
and into their pockets.
What they did was nothing short of revolutionary. What they did
also should have been outlawed. They transformed the corporate
ethos of 'retain and reinvest' into 'downsize and distribute/."
Les Leopold
"Weapons manufacturer Lockheed
Martin, which spent $8.4 in campaign contributions and $84.1 in
lobbying, received $332 billion in federal business and support,
making it the largest recipient of federal business."
Alex Ellefson
"The essence of socialism
is monopoly control by the state.
... The difference between a corporate state
monopoly and a socialist state monopoly is essentially only the
identity of the group controlling the power structure.
... The phenomenon of corporate legal monopoly-market control
acquired by using political influence is called "corporate
socialism".
Corporate socialism is intimately related to making society work
for the few."
Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall
Street and FDR"
"Privilege gives birth
to corruption, just as the poisonous sewer breeds disease. Equal
chance, a fair field and no favors, the "square deal"
are never corrupt. They do not appear in legislative halls nor
in Council Chambers. For these things mean labor for labor, value
for value, something for something. This is why the little business
man, the retail and wholesale dealer, the jobber, and the manufacturer
are not the business men whose business corrupts politics."
Frederick Howe, in his 1906 booklet
"Confessions of a Monopolist"
FINANCE REIGNS SUPREME
"The global banking elite
are moving the world to a New World Order in which they will have
absolute and total control of all wealth and all levers of political
and military power. To a world that utilizes 21st Century technology
to enslave the population. All based on lies and the greed of
a very small number of very powerful people leading the masses
into the worst nightmare of human history. Ultimately, where their
current End Game in the drive for a New World Order is taking
us is a place of total global destruction. Sadly, there is no
force, political or otherwise, that seems capable of reversing
the trend to global economic disaster and global war."
Don Quijones
"By 1974 one-third of the
$60 billion pool of OPEC windfall petrodollars flowed into the
largest US banks... Out of $14.5 billion in Middle East oil revenues
that made it to US shores, 78% was deposited into six mega-banks:
Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Citibank, Bank of America,
Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Chemical Bank. After a spate of
mergers those six banks are now three: JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup
and Bank of America."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"Fidelity Investments,
the world's largest mutual fund, accounts for 24 percent of the
global 401(k) market and over 12 percent of the world's equity
market. It manages more than $3 trillion in financial assets."
David Rothkopf
"Some of the country's
biggest financial institutions - Goldman Sachs, Bank of America
and others - are the top recipients of federal aid. That's because
it cost so much to rescue the financial sector after the 2008
market crash."
Peter Overby
"Banks were the biggest
beneficiaries of Washington (2008 bank bailout) policies due to
the enormous bailouts that helped Wall Street weather the 2008
recession, even while many homeowners suffered due to the reckless
banking and investment practices that caused the collapse."
Alex Ellefson
"The American banking oligarchy
consists of six megabanks - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan
Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo... They have
assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product.
And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks
or their predecessors had less than 20 percent."
James Kwak
"The global banking cartel,
centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid
off politicians and dictators the world over [Including Washington].
In country after country, they have looted national economies
at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented
fashion ."
David DeGraw
"Today, we have a far more
concentrated and less competitive banking system. There are fewer
banks operating across the country, and the five largest institutions
control more than half of the industry's assets, which is equal
to almost 60 percent of GDP. The largest 20 institutions control
80 percent of the industry's assets, which amounts to about 86
percent of GDP."
Charles Hugh Smith
"The money powers prey
on the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times
of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than monarchy,
more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They
denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw
light upon their crimes."
Abraham Lincoln
"The powers of financial
capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create
a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate
the political system of each country and the economy of the world
as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion
by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret
agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."
Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy
and Hope"
"Black Rock is the world's
largest asset manager, with nearly four trillion dollars under
management in the spring of 2012."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats"
"Banks such as HSBC have
created a system for making themselves rich at the expense of
society, by assisting in tax evasion and money laundering. Money
is easy to hide. These branches invite their clients to sporting
and cultural events, where they meet intermediaries who explain
how to get money to Switzerland without having to physically transport
it across the border. They offer clients non-banking products,
life insurance policies that exist for the sole purpose of tax
evasion for example, or gold, which the bank stores in its safety
deposit boxes for a fee."
Hervé Falciani, a whistleblower
and former HSBC employee who was a systems engineer for the bank's
Geneva operations
"A handful of investment
banks exerts an enormous amount of control over the global economy.
Their activities include advising Third World debt negotiations,
handling mergers and breakups, creating companies to fill a perceived
economic void through the launching of initial public stock offerings,
underwriting all stocks, underwriting all corporate and government
bond issuance, and pushing the bandwagon down the road of privatization
and globalization of the world economy."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf"
"A cartel of the most powerful
international banks - the current primary dealers of the Federal
Reserve System - hold a monopoly position in international banking."
list compiled by Damon Vrabel
United States
Bank of America Securities LLC, Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Citigroup
Global Markets Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., Jefferies &
Company, Inc., J. P. Morgan Securities Inc., Morgan Stanley &
Co. Inc.
Britain
Barclays Capital Inc.. HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
Switzerland
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, UBS Securities LLC.
Japan
Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc., Mizuho Securities USA Inc.,
Nomura Securities International, Inc.
Germany
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
France
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Canada
RBC Capital Markets Corp.
Scotland
RBS Securities Inc.
ENDEMIC CORRUPTION
"The United States government
is subservient to the whim of the .01%. Political office is now
merely a stepping-stone and initiation process that politicians
go through to be accepted into the aristocracy."
David DeGraw
"Kleptocrats have transformed
politics to trade. They are traders who use their power, access,
and privileged information to generate wealth. And at the same
time well-connected financiers and corporate leaders have made
a business of politics. They come together to form a kleptocratic
caste."
Charles Hugh Smith
"American politicians don't
represent "the people." With a few honorable exceptions,
they represent the 1%. American democracy is being corrupted out
of existence."
Juan Cole
"American democracy has
been dying a death by a thousand cuts for years. Every successive
federal election in recent memory brings new ways for smaller
numbers of super-rich people and institutions to have more power
and influence."
www.alternet.org
"As the public begins to
grasp the depth of the betrayal and abuse by our ruling class;
as the Democratic and Republican parties expose themselves as
craven tools of our corporate state; as savings accounts, college
funds, and retirement plans become worthless; as unemployment
skyrockets and home values go up in smoke, we must prepare for
the political resurgence of reinvigorated right-wing radicals
including those within the Christian Right."
Chris Hedges
"The oligarchs have had
a good run. The system cannot be reformed from within. The corruption
runs too deep. The system is broken and can't be fixed."
www.washingtonsblog.com, 2014
"Other countries have long
emulated aspects of the American Way in designing their own development
models. Having access to higher education, creating conditions
that support innovation and allowing for greater upward mobility
have all been deeply attractive qualities to many nations. But
it is the construction of a durable U.S. middle class that has
been perhaps most compelling to highly stratified societies across
Latin America, Asia and Africa. Now, however, the United States
is moving in the other direction, toward an unstable society divided
between astronomically rich elites and everyone else. This undermines
a critical component of U.S. soft power and is a model for societal
engineering that few would choose to emulate."
Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2009 to 2013 Kurt Campbell
"Every general in the military
hoped to cash out by going to work for a major defense contractor
as soon as he or she retired from active duty. Many feared that
if they took any actions against these contractors (to hold them
accountable for fraud or shoddy work) while still in the military
their post-retirement job prospects would dim."
author James Risen, 2014
"Once upon a time the GOP
stood for Grand Old Party - now it stands for Guardians of Privilege,
and this is payback time for everything from fracking to getting
the big banks off the hook; from doing away with the minimum wage
and coddling off-shore corporate tax avoiders to privatizing Medicare
and Social Security; to gutting the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, even the U.S. Postal
Service.
Democrats are so compromised by their own addiction to Big Money
they have forgotten their history as champion of the working stiff,
the little folks down there at the bottom. The great problems
facing everyday people in America - inequality, stagnant wages,
children in poverty, our degraded infrastructure and stressed
environment - are not being seriously addressed because the political
class is afraid to offend the people who write the checks - the
corporations and the rich. Everyone else can be safely ignored."
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
"Over 400 years ago, the
Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli engaged in a profound
study of methods used by various rulers to attain power... The
findings of Machiavelli and other students of power decree that
to obtain power it is essential to ignore the moral laws of man
and of God; that promises must be made only with the intention
to deceive and to mislead others to sacrifice their own interests;
that the most brutal atrocity must be committed as a matter of
mere convenience; that friends or allies must be betrayed as matter
of course as soon as they have served their purpose. But, it is
also decreed that these atrocities must be kept hidden from the
common people except only where they are of use to strike terror
to the hearts of opponents; that there must be kept up a spurious
aspect of benevolence and benefit for the greater number of the
people, and even an aspect of humility to gain as much help as
possible."
E. C. Knuth in his book "The
Empire of the "City": The Secret History of British
Financial Power"
"The US military budget
is bloated and enormous, bigger than the military budgets of the
next twelve major states. What isn't usually realized is that
perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services, not on the
military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. Officers
in the military get out and then form companies to sell things
to their former colleagues still on the inside."
Juan Cole
"Police forces in America
are oppressive organizations now controlled by the one percent
of corporate America. Corporate America is using police forces
as their mercenaries.
... This police system is corrupt, that police really are oppressing
not only the black community, but also the whites."
retired Philadelphia Police Captain,
Ray Lewis
"Kleptocracy has clearly
figured out how to extract wealth from the rest of us based solely
on their position and proximity to power. If you have a seat at
the table, you are in for a feast. If you don't have a seat at
the table, you are on the menu."
Charles Hugh Smith
"The conventional wisdom
out there is that businesses are going to Washington, writing
checks and expecting big returns. But the other side of the story
is that members of Congress may implicitly threaten businesses
that if they don't change their policy, or if they are not heavily
involved in the political process, that bad things might happen
to them.
... Our government has become a clearing house for corporations
and plutocrats whose dollars grease the wheels for lucrative contracts
and easy regulation."
political scientist David Primo
"Our public coffers being
emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions
working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums
of money to, the representatives of "the people" - kleptocracy
on a scale to dazzle."
William J. Astore
"From 2007 to 2012, the
200 most politically active corporations in the United States
spent almost $6 billion for lobbying and campaign contributions.
And they received more than $4 trillion in U.S. government contracts
and other forms of assistance. That's $760 for every dollar spent
on influence, a stunning return on investment."
Sunlight Foundation
"Monopoly laws are born
in corruption. The commercialism of the press, or education, even
of sweet charity, is part of the price we pay for the special
privileges created by law. The desire of something for nothing,
of making the other fellow pay, of monopoly in some form or other,
is the cause of corruption. Monopoly and corruption are cause
and effect. Together, they work in Congress, in our Commonwealths,
in our municipalities. It is always so. It always has been so.
Privilege gives birth to corruption, just as the poisonous sewer
breeds disease. Equal chance, a fair field and no favors, the
"square deal" are never corrupt. They do not appear
in legislative halls nor in Council Chambers. For these things
mean labor for labor, value for value, something for something.
This is why the little business man, the retail and wholesale
dealer, the jobber, and the manufacturer are not the business
men whose business corrupts politics."
Frederick Howe, in his 1906 booklet
"Confessions of a Monopolist"
"Our government has become
a clearing house for corporations and plutocrats whose dollars
grease the wheels for lucrative contracts and easy regulation."
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
EXTREME INEQUALITY
"Oxfam said wealth was
being concentrated in the hands of increasingly fewer people,
while the world's poorest continued to get poorer. In 2010 some
388 people owned as much as the world's poorest 50 percent."
www.aljazeera.com, 2016
"When you are used to being
catered to twenty-four/seven, you start to feel the world should
be built around you and your needs. You lose all sense of perspective."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats"
"One hundred people in
India own wealth equivalent to 25% of India's GDP.
... India has more poor people than all
the poorest countries of Africa put together. India has more than
800 million people who live on less than .50 cents a day. It has
the largest population of malnourished children."
Arundhati Roy
"In the 1970s, as wages
detached from productivity, the rich progressively got richer.
They used their wealth to reduce taxes on capital, role back critical
regulations, break up the unions, install their own lapdog politicians,
push through trade agreements that pitted US workers against low-paid
labor in the developing world, and induce their shady Central
Bank buddies to keep interest rates locked below the rate of inflation
so they could cream hefty profits off gigantic asset bubbles.
Now, 40 years later, they own the whole shooting match, lock,
stock and barrel. And it's all because management decided to take
the lion's share of productivity gains."
Mike Whitney
"47 individuals in the
U.S. own more than all 160 million Americans."
www.truth-out.org, 2014
"Economic hit men (EHMs)
are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe
out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World
Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and
other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of
huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who
control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent
financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex,
and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has
taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."
John Perkins
"The corporation is designed
to make money without regard to human life, the social good, or
the impact of the corporation's activities on the environment.
Corporation bylaws impose a legal duty on corporate executives
to make the largest profits possible for shareholders."
Chris Hedges
"Over the last 20 years
or so, in certain countries, the rich have been getting substantially
richer. The share of the top 1% of the population of income has
grown substantially in countries such as the US, UK and Canada.
The countries, which apparently tolerate income inequality, are
what we call plutonomy countries - economies powered by a relatively
small number of rich people."
from a Citigroup Plutonomy symposium,
2006
"Inequality in America today is twice
as bad as in ancient Rome, worse than it was in Tsarist Russia,
Gilded Age America, modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, many banana
republics in Latin America, and worse than experienced by slavesin
1774 colonial America."
www.washingtonsblog.com
"For those who work for
a living, the level of inequality in the U.S. is probably higher
than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in
the world."
Thomas Piketty
"There is rising evidence
that extreme inequality harms, durably and significantly, the
stability of the financial system and growth in the economy. It
slows development of the human, social and physical capital necessary
for raising living standards and improving well-being."
Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England's
chief economist
"The international community
is not helping rebuild Haiti. It is improving colonialism in Haiti
with its companies, using the country's population as slave labor
to boost profits. The startling difference between the slow reconstruction
efforts for Haitians as opposed to the rapid rise of the luxury
hotel industry shows that in Haiti, the foreigners come first."
Julie Lévesque, 2015
"The rich are well placed
to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich. This and
other government policies have produced a situation where 400
American billionaires are worth $2 trillion, as much as the bottom
150 million Americans. That kind of wealth inequality hasn't been
seen in the US since the age of the robber barons in the nineteenth
century. Both eras are marked by extreme corruption."
Juan Cole
"Private capital tends
to become concentrated in a few hands, partly because of competition
among the capitalists, and partly because technological development
and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of
larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital
the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even
by a democratically organized political society."
Albert Einstein, Monthly Review,
1949
"The world's billionaires,
those roughly one thousand individuals, have combined wealth greater
than that of the poorest 2.5 billion."
David Rothkopf
"Credit Suisse calculated
that there were about 29.6 million millionaires - people with
more than $1 million in net assets - in the world, about half
a percent of the total global population. North Americans account
for 37 percent of the global millionaires, slightly fewer than
the 37.2 percent who are European. Asia-Pacific, excluding China
and India, is home to 5.7 million (19.2 percent), while there
are just over 1 million in China (3.4 percent) The remaining 937,000
live in India, Africa, or Latin America."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"As with previous waves
of plutonomy - such as sixteenth century Spain, seventeenth century
Holland, Industrial Revolution Britain, the Gilded Age and the
Roaring Twenties in the US - the technological revolution has
generated a new wave of ultra-high net worth individuals."
from a Citigroup Plutonomy symposium,
2006
"Oxfam International reported
that the 85 richest people in the world now have the same wealth
as the 3.5 billion poorest. The wealthiest 1% of the global population
owns roughly half of the world's wealth. Inequality is rising
most rapidly in the US, where the richest 1% have benefitted the
most from economic growth since 2009. During that same period,
the poorest 90% in the US became poorer."
Benjamin Dangl
"The fortunes of the wealthy
have grown, especially at the very top. The 16,000 families making
up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now
control 11.2% of total wealth-back to the 1916 share, which is
the highest on record. Those down the distribution have not done
quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth
$73m on average) hold 22% of America's wealth, just shy of the
1929 peak-and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the
population. Meanwhile the share of wealth held by families from
the 90th to the 99th percentile has actually fallen over the last
decade, though not by as much as the net worth of the bottom 90%."
Emmanuel Saez of the University
of California, Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of the London School
of Economics, 2014
"The World is dividing
into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. In a plutonomy there
is no such animal as 'the U.S. consumer' or 'the UK consumer'
or indeed 'the Russian consumer.' There are rich consumers, few
in number but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income
and consumption they take. There are the rest, the nonrich, the
multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small
bites of the national pie."
a Citigroup 2005 memo
"Inequality is extreme
and growing, and economic recovery following the financial crisis
has been skewed in favour of the wealthiest. In poor countries,
rising inequality means the difference between children getting
the chance to go to school and sick people getting life saving
medicines."
Emma Seery, Oxfam, 2014
"When it comes to super-wealth,
the United States is unassailably at the top. America is home
to 42 percent of all UHNWIs [ultra high net worth individuals],
with 35,400. China is in second place, with 5,400, or 6.4 percent
of the total, followed by Germany (4,135), Switzerland (3,820),
and Japan (3,400). Russia has 1,970, India 1,840, Brazil 1,520,
Taiwan 1,400, Turkey 1,100, and Hong Kong 1,030."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"Global wealth has risen
by 68 percent over the past 10 years. The richest 1 percent own
46 percent of global wealth, with the top 10 percent claiming
86 percent."
www.economywatch.com
[2013 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report]
"The number of billionaires
in the world has more than doubled to 1,646 since the financial
crisis of 2009, with inequality reaching new extremes.
The combined wealth of today's billionaires has grown by 124 percent
in the last four years to $5.4 trillion.
The 85 richest people saw their fortunes increase by around $240
billion over the past year, and own as much as the poorest half
of the world's population - the equivalent of $668 million per
day or almost half a million dollars per minute."
Luke MacGregor (Oxfam report-2014)
"The 85 richest people
have as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest people [half of
the entire world population]."
www.washingtonsblog.com
"The moment China, the
oil-rich states, and other international investors stop buying
U.S. Treasury Bonds, the dollar will become junk. Inflation will
rocket upward. We will become Weimar Germany. A furious and sustained
backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually
and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats
and most of the Republicans. A cabal of protofascist misfits,
from Christian demagogues to simpletons to loudmouth talk-show
hosts, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral
renewal. The elites, the ones with their Harvard Business School
degrees and expensive vocabularies, will retreat into their sheltered
enclaves of privilege and comfort. We will be left bereft, abandoned
outside the gates, and at the mercy of the security state."
Chris Hedges
"Other countries have long
emulated aspects of the American Way in designing their own development
models. Having access to higher education, creating conditions
that support innovation and allowing for greater upward mobility
have all been deeply attractive qualities to many nations. But
it is the construction of a durable U.S. middle class that has
been perhaps most compelling to highly stratified societies across
Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Now, however, the United States is moving in the other direction,
toward an unstable society divided between astronomically rich
elites and everyone else. This undermines a critical component
of U.S. soft power and is a model for societal engineering that
few would choose to emulate."
Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2009 to 2013 Kurt Campbell
"In the 1970s, the top
1 percent of earners captured about 10 percent of the national
income. thirty-five years later their share had risen to nearly
a third of the national income, as high as it had been during
the Gilded Age."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"12,000 families around
the United States have been pulling in anywhere from $40 million
to $60 million a year from their post-recession investments. Over
100,000 families have made $4 million per year."
www.truth-out.org, 2014
"The fortunes of the wealthy
have grown, especially at the very top. The 16,000 families making
up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now
control 11.2% of total wealth-back to the 1916 share, which is
the highest on record. Those down the distribution have not done
quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth
$73m on average) hold 22% of America's wealth, just shy of the
1929 peak-and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the
population. Meanwhile the share of wealth held by families from
the 90th to the 99th percentile has actually fallen over the last
decade, though not by as much as the net worth of the bottom 90%."
[from a study by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California,
Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics]
www.economist.com, 2014
"As our financial crisis
unravels, and our currency becomes worthless, there will be a
loss of confidence in the traditional mechanisms that regulate
society. When money becomes worthless, so does government. All
traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic
crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and
industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers, and
speculators walk away with millions."
Chris Hedges
"The bottom half of the
global population own less than 1% of total wealth. In sharp contrast,
the richest decile hold 87% of the world's wealth, and the top
percentile alone account for 48.2% of global assets."
Credit Suisse global wealth report,
2014
"Plutocrats can lack sympathy,
shading sometimes into disdain, for everyone else. For the super-elite,
a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire self-regard, and
that self-regard - especially when compounded by their isolation
among like-minded peers - can lead to obliviousness and indifference
to the suffering of others."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats"
"While the number of super-rich
is skyrocketing, one million women have died in childbirth due
to lack of basic health care, and 57 million children do not receive
any form of education.
16 billionaires live in Sub-Saharan Africa alongside 358 million
people living in extreme poverty, while inequality in South Africa
is higher than it was at the end of apartheid."
Luke MacGregor
RISE OF THE POLICE
STATE
"When and if a true history
of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of
the American police state but it will also chart the decline of
freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule
of law and held the government accountable for its actions has
steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided,
a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is
a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance
is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than
a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance."
John W. Whitehead
"By Nazi or Soviet standards,
America is not a police state. But the dictionary definition does
not require the extremes of a Gestapo, or a KGB; it defines a
police state as "a government that seeks to intimidate and
suppress political opposition by means of police, especially a
secret national police organization." The FBI and the CIA
have done precisely that."
David Wise
"Never once did I hear
anybody, including myself, raise the question: 'Is this course
of action which we have agreed upon lawful, is it legal, is it
ethical or moral?' ... We never gave any thought to this line
of reasoning, because we were just naturally pragmatists. The
one thing we were concerned about was this: 'Will this course
of action work, will it get us what we want ...?' As far as legality
is concerned, morals or ethics, it was never raised... I think
this suggests really in government that we are amoral."
William Sullivan, number three
at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, told the Senate Intelligence
Committee
"The emergence of the warrior
cop and the surveillance state go hand in hand and are indicative
of the rise of the authoritarian state and the dismantling of
civil liberties. Brutality mixed with attacks on freedom of dissent
and peaceful protest prompts memories of past savage regimes such
as the dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s."
Henry Giroux
"The rapidity with which
the U.S. is being transformed into a police state is astonishing.
It has occurred under the guise of "the war on terror,"
itself a product of 9/11. Americans were told that the police
state regime was only for terrorists, but the suspension of constitutionally
guaranteed civil liberties now extends to all."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2010
"[The National Security
Agency's monitoring capability] at any time could be turned around
on the American people and no American would have any privacy
left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone
conversations, telegrams, it ç doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny,
if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological
capacity that the intelligence community has given the government
could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no
way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine
together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately
it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such
is the capability of this technology... I know the capability
that is there to make tyranny total in America."
Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence
in 1975
"The basic authority of
a modern state over its people resides in its war powers... On
a day-to-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police,
armed organizations charged expressly with dealing with 'internal
enemies' in a military manner."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"It's no coincidence that
the similarities between the American police state and past totalitarian
regimes such as Nazi Germany grow more pronounced with each passing
day. This is how freedom falls, and tyrants come to power."
John W. Whitehead
"The last twenty years
of global "free market" economy have destroyed, through
poverty and social destitution, the lives of millions of people.
Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western
governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites,
have installed a "Big Brother" police state, with a
mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social
dissent."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Anyone who speaks out
against the government's policies could be declared an 'unlawful
enemy combatant' and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American
citizens."
Military Commissions Act, 2006
"To this day I do not understand
why I was made the subject of the wiretapping, the bugging, or
the surveillance, or whether the purpose was really to entrap
me or perhaps someone inside the government who might be speaking
to me. I am only sure that a monster has been allowed to grow
up, and unless it is subject to regular control by impartial persons
I think all of us will be the victims.
... We came a hell of a lot closer to a police state than I thought
possible."
Washington DC columnist Joseph
Kraft in his testimony to the United States Senate in 1974, about
surveillance of him by the Nixon Administration.
"Police forces in America
are oppressive organizations controlled by corporate America.
Corporate America is using police forces as their mercenaries.
... The police system is corrupt, police are oppressing not only
the black community, but also the whites."
retired Philadelphia Police Captain,
Ray Lewis
"The police have been turned
into soldiers who view the neighbourhoods in which they operate
as war zones. Outfitted with full riot gear, submachine guns,
armoured vehicles, and other lethal weapons imported from the
battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, their mission is to assume
battle-ready behaviour."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"We have created a uniquely
American police state, one that has managed to grow and operate
within, or at least alongside, the democratic system."
David Wise
"In the U.S., the Federal
Bureau of Investigation that does the secret police dirty work
of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents,
and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues
and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to
Americans' phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence
Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable
individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the
overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that
of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss'
dirty work."
John W. Whitehead
"It's worse than George
Orwell could have imagined in his book "1984" because
fechnological advancements between his time and ours.
The power of government today to control far exceeds what Big
Brother had in Orwell's imagination.
Homeland Security has announced that it is no longer focused on
terrorists, but on domestic extremists - and that's war protesters,
radical enviromentalists and people that disagree with the government."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
"The Defense Authorization
Act of 2007 has laid the foundation for martial law, since it
empowers the president to order National Guard troops from one
state to any other to respond to what the president sees as a
national emergency. The occurrence of another "terrorist
act" could provide the government with the excuse it needs."
William F. Pepper in his book "An
Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"
"The Military Commissions
Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the
executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy
combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill
of Rights."
Christopher Ketcham
"The FBI jeopardizes the
whole system of freedom of expression which is the cornerstone
of an open society. At worst it raises the specter of a police
state. In essence the FBI conceives of itself as an instrument
to prevent radical social change in America."
Yale law professor Thomas Emerson
at a conference on the FBI, 1971
"Over the years we have
been warned about the danger of subversive organizations, organizations
that would threaten our liberties, subvert our system, would encourage
its members to take further illegal action to advance their views,
organizations that would incite and promote violence, putting
one American group against another... There is an organization
that does fit those descriptions: the FBI did all of those things.
"
Senator Philip Hart of Michigan
testifying before the Church Committee, 1975
"The most outrageous of
the FBI's activities was its COINTELPRO operation, which the Bureau
admitted it had conducted for fifteen years, between 1956 and
1971. Under this program, a secret arm of the United States government,
using taxpayers' funds, harassed American citizens and disrupted
their organizations, using a wide variety of covert techniques."
David Wise
"I cannot say that our
country could have no central police without becoming totalitarian,
but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian
without a centralized national police ... A national police...
will have enough on enough people, even if it does not elect to
prosecute them, so that it will find no opposition to its policies."
Supreme Court justice Robert H.
Jackson 'The Supreme Court in the American System of Government'
(1955)
"What keeps most Americans
from being shocked by the shredding of the Bill of Rights is that
they have yet to feel the consequences, either personally or through
someone close to them. It would appear, however, that they only
have to wait."
William Blum in his book "Rogue
State"
"In the U.S., the Federal
Bureau of Investigation that does the secret police dirty work
of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents,
and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues
and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to
Americans' phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence
Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable
individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the
overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that
of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss'
dirty work."
John W. Whitehead
"The Military Commissions
Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the
executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy
combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill
of Rights."
Christopher Ketcham
"Anyone who speaks out
against the government's policies could be declared an 'unlawful
enemy combatant' and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American
citizens."
Military Commissions Act, 2006
"While we all have a part
to play in laying the foundations for this police state--the American
people due to our inaction and gullibility; the corporations,
who long ago sold us out for the profit they could make on us;
the federal government, for using our tax dollars to fund technologies
aimed at entrapping us; lobbyists who have greased the wheels
of politics in order to ensure that these technologies are adopted
by government agencies; the courts, for failing to guard our liberties
more vigilantly; the president, for using our stimulus funds to
fatten the pockets of technology execs at the expense of our civil
liberties--it's Congress that bears the brunt of the blame. Our
so-called elected representatives could and should have provided
oversight on these technologies in order to limit their wide-spread
use by corporations and government agencies. Yet they have done
nothing to protect us from the encroaching police state. In fact,
they have facilitated this fast-moving transition into a suspect
society."
John W. Whitehead
Roman Emperor Caligula
TRIUMPH OF THE PSYCHOPATHS
" Pathocracy is a system
of government wherein a small pathological minority takes control
over a society of normal people."
Andrew M. Lobaczewski in his book
"Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil Adjusted
for Political Purposes"
"Psychopaths do well in
politics. They are ideally suited to the ruthless, competitive,
self-promoting and manipulative power games that dominate party
politics."
Stuart Hertzog
"Psychopathic behavior
seems to be on the rise because of the very nature of American
capitalistic society. The great hustlers, charmers, and self-promoters
are perfect examples of where the psychopath can thrive. The entertainment
industry, the sports industry, the corporate world in a capitalistic
system, are all areas where psychopaths naturally rise to the
top."
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
"Has the government of
the United States of America become a criminal enterprise? Is
the nation ruled by psychopaths? How can the impoverishment of
the people, the promotion of the military-industrial complex and
endless wars and their genocidal killing, the degradation of the
environment, the neglect of the collapsing infrastructure, and
the support of corrupt and authoritarian governments abroad be
explained? Worse, why are corporations allowed to profiteer during
wars while the people are called upon to sacrifice? Why hasn't
the government ever tried to prohibit such profiteering?"
John Kozy
"Psychopaths are naturally
attracted to positions of power, and they will overwhelm anyone
with a conscience, who plays by the rules and has good intentions.
So you will have people with very dark interior lives, who are
controlling channels of communication, controlling finance, controlling
industry. And, they will promote their psychopathic "family"
values. Psychopathic "values" now permeate all facets
of our culture."
Stefan Verstappen
"Most psychopathic serial
killers and many professional politicians must mimic what they
believe are appropriate responses to situations they face such
as sadness, empathy, sympathy, and other human responses to outside
stimuli. ... These traits exist in men and women who are drawn
to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political
officeholders."
Jim Kouri
"Psychopaths seek positions
of power and influence, and politics offers publicity, prestige,
and other perks. It also provides positions of ultimate authority
over military, industry, and entire populations. In a world where
psychopaths are understandably viewed as morally repulsive, often
finding themselves at home in the criminal world, politics offers
an opportunity to create a new world, to be free from the moral
and legal rules of society."
Harrison Koehli
"American leaders are perhaps
not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take
pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they
just don't care. The same that could be said about a sociopath.
As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire,
as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth
and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and
suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them, then
they just don't care about it happening to other people, including
the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home
- the ones who make it back alive - with Agent Orange or Gulf
War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would
not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such
things."
William Blum
"When we view the true
nature of psychopathic influence - that it is conscienceless,
emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any
moral or ethical standards - then everything suddenly begins to
makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people
who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally
have no conscience."
Andrzej Lobaczewski in his book
"Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted
for political purposes"
"Power is an addiction
its abusers can neither comprehend nor arrest. They are programmed
towards ruthless, hegemonic domination of the 'other'... The 'free
market' really means freedom for the few to steal everything from
the many. The game is rigged so that the people lose either way."
Niall Bradley
"Many politicians share
the traits of psychopaths who are not sensitive to altruistic
appeals, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt
over their crimes. They possess the personality traits of lying,
narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. These are the people to whom
we have entrusted our fate. Is it any wonder that America is failing
at home and world-wide?"
John Kozy
"Psychopaths have played
a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because
they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict
great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse."
Kevin Barnett
"We continue to allow leaders
who are motivated by self-interest, or by their own psychological
issues from the past, to fan bitterness and political crisis into
armed confrontation and war."
Martha Stout
"In politics the professional
psychopath's ruthlessness and cunning gives them a distinct advantage
over any nonpsychopath rival. They make charismatic leaders, manipulating
and brainwashing the naive, vulnerable, uneducated, or mentally
weak. Mastery of lying allows them to make whatever outrageous
campaign promises straight faced with, of course, no intention
of keeping any of them. A life spent faking being human give them
the ability to assume the roles of virtuous public servant, the
perfect father, husband, advisor, mentor, and everyman. In addition
when things get rough they have no inhibitions in playing dirty
and readily resort to murder, assassination, persecution, war
and genocide."
Stefan H. Verstappen
"Our leaders are cruel
because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless
can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment.
People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion
and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president
of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state,
or national security adviser."
William Blum
REPUGNANT EXCESS FOR
THE RICH
"The richest one-hundredth
of one percent of Americans now hold over 11 percent of the nation's
total wealth. That's a higher share than the top .01 percent held
in 1929, before the Great Crash. We're talking about 16,000 people,
each worth at least $110 million."
Robert Reich
"Oxfam said wealth was
being concentrated in the hands of increasingly fewer people,
while the world's poorest continued to get poorer. In 2010 some
388 people owned as much as the world's poorest 50 percent."
www.aljazeera.com, 2016
"Credit Suisse notes that
the super-rich, which it calls "ultra high net worth individuals"
or UHNWs, have assets above $50 million."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"47 individuals in the
U.S. own more than all 160 million Americans.
...12,000 families around the country have been pulling in anywhere
from $40 million to $60 million a year from their post-recession
investments. Over 100,000 families have made $4 million per year."
www.truth-out.org, 2014
"The rich are likely to
keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the
wealth pie over the coming years. Rising profit margins will keep
profit growth strong, and equities are at any rate undervalued.
And the rich tend to be disproportionately exposed to the equity
markets. While there are challenges to this, not least through
populations/the political process demanding a more "equitable"
share of the wealth, in the short term we think the trend of the
rich getting richer is likely to persist."
from a Citigroup Plutonomy symposium,
2006
"The fortunes of the wealthy
have grown, especially at the very top. The 16,000 families making
up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now
control 11.2% of total wealth-back to the 1916 share, which is
the highest on record. Those down the distribution have not done
quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth
$73m on average) hold 22% of America's wealth, just shy of the
1929 peak-and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the
population. Meanwhile the share of wealth held by families from
the 90th to the 99th percentile has actually fallen over the last
decade, though not by as much as the net worth of the bottom 90%."
Emmanuel Saez of the University
of California, Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of the London School
of Economics, 2014
"The richest 1% of the
world's population own more than 48% of global wealth."
The Guardian newspaper, 2014
"The "ultra-rich"
economic top 0.01% of US households now has an all-time high 11.1%
of overall wealth. while the top 1% now has an all-time high 39.8%
of wealth."
David DeGraw, 2014
"Most stocks and bonds
are now owned by other corporations, not by people."
George Draffan
"Sales of the largest,
most expensive private jets - including private jumbo jets - are
soaring, with higher prices and long waiting lists. Smaller, cheaper
jets, however, are piling up on the nation's private-jet tarmacs
with big discounts and few buyers.
The wealthy now have a wealth gap of their own, as economic gains
become more highly concentrated at the very top. As the top one-hundredth
of the 1 percent pulls away from the rest of that group, the superrich
are leaving the merely very rich behind.
Demand for billionaires' most coveted jet, the $65 million G650
from Gulfstream, is so strong that some G650 owners are now flipping
their planes for millions of dollars in profit just months after
buying them.
Sales of personal, V.I.P. jetliners are also strong. Boeing has
received several orders from individuals for its 777-300ER (which
normally carries 400 passengers) and its even bigger 747-800.
Sales and orders of boats longer than 300 feet are at or near
a record high, according to brokers and yacht builders. But prices
for boats 100 to 150 feet long are down 30 to 50 percent from
their peak.
Feadship, the yacht builder, is about to deliver its largest boat
- a 330-footer that sells for more than $250 million - and it
recently expanded its shipyard to make ever-bigger hulls.
The largest yacht in the world is the 590-foot Azzam, owned by
the president of the United Arab Emirates."
Robert Frank
DIRTY MONEY
DRUG TRAFFICKING AND MONEY LAUNDERING
"A huge chunk of international
banking and related financial operations have been created solely
to manage dirty money.
... The Anglo-Dutch banking operations control illegal drug and
related trade.
... The Anglo-Dutch oligarchy's banking operations have the following
qualifications:
They have run the drug trade for a century and a half.
They dominate those banking centers closed off to law enforcement
agencies.
Almost all such "offshore," unregulated banking centers
are under the direct political control of the British and Dutch
monarchies and their allies.
They dominate all banking at the heart of the narcotics traffic;
the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, created in 1864 to finance the
drug trade, is exemplary.
They control world trade in gold and diamonds, a necessary aspect
of "hard commodity" exchange for drugs.
They subsume the full array of connections to organized crime,
the pro-drug legislative lobby in the USA, and all other elements
of distribution, protection, and legal support."
www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How
the Drug Empire Works"
"The $500 billion international
narcotics trade today is second only to the world oil trade. Total
world trade volume is $1.7 trillion... The question that emerges
is: "How is it possible that $500 billion and up in dirty
money, crisscrossing international borders, can remain outside
the control of the law?" Only one possible answer can be
admitted: A huge chunk of international banking and related financial
operations has been created solely to manage dirty money."
from the book "DOPE, INC.",
1992
"The American habit of
training, arming, and financing its drug-trafficking allies in
order to help secure oil resources abroad has been a major factor
in the huge increase n global illicit drug trafficking since World
War II."
Peter Dale Scott, 2003
"British Overseas Territories
and Crown Dependencies make up around 25 per cent of the world's
tax havens.
Tax havens include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands,
the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands
to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City
of London's crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is
now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have
recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating
openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control."
Graham Vanbergen
"Money laundering, according
to IMF estimates for the 1990s, was between 590 billion and 1.5
trillion dollars a year. The proceeds of the drug trade are deposited
in the banking system. Drug money is laundered in the numerous
offshore banking havens in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British
Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and some 50 other locations
around the globe. It is here that criminal syndicates involved
in the drug trade and the representatives of the world's largest
commercial banks interact. Dirty money is deposited in these offshore
havens, which are controlled by major Western banks and financial
institutions which have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining
the drug trade."
Michel Chossudovsky
"Antonio Maria Costa of
the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that drug trafficking organisations
were blatantly recycling dirty money through European and American
banks, but no one takes any notice. He found that banks were welcoming
dirty money because they need cash, liquidity during the financial
crisis."
Roberto Saviano
"New York and London have
become the world's two biggest laundries of criminal and drug
money, and offshore tax havens. Not the Cayman Islands, not the
Isle of Man or Jersey. The big laundering is right through the
City of London and Wall Street."
Martin Woods, bank money laundering
investigator, to the Observer newspaper in 2011
"The Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank [HSBC] and related companies finance the opium trade. In
this, they are acting as designated agents of the British monarchy,
through the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The world illegal drug traffic is controlled by a single group
of men whose intimate ties of ownership, family, and political
collaboration go back 200 years."
www.bibliotecapleyades.net
"Drug money is an
inherent part of the American and world economy. The amount of
profit generated annually by the drug trade is somewhere around
$700 billion. This figure includes heroin, opium, morphine, marijuana,
cocaine, crack cocaine and hallucinogens.
... The International Drug Trade is the most highly organized,
top-down political machinery in the world, enjoying the protection
of every political entity Britain and the US have created through
these vast invisible earnings.
Daniel Estulin in his book "Shadow
Masters"
"The economy in Britain
and America is totally dependent on drug money."
James Casbolt in his article "MI-6
Are The Lords of the Global Drug Trade"
"The City of London now
stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global
crime. It is the heart and engine of the offshore haven, with
Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man its european collection centres,
the caribbean and others hoovering up billions of dollars from
all over the globe... It has a dark and shadowy client list; terrorists,
drug barons, arms dealers, politicians, corporations and companies,
millionaires, billionaires - most with something to hide."
Graham Vanbergen
"From Colombia to Miami,
from the Golden Triangle to the Golden Gate, from Hong Kong to
New York, from Bogota to Frankfurt, the drug trade, and more especially
the heroin trade, is big business and it is run from the top down
by some of the most "untouchable" families in the world...
It is not a street corner business, and it takes a great deal
of money and expertise to keep it flowing smoothly.
... It is, in fact, the largest single enterprise in the world
today, transcending all others. That it is protected from the
top down is borne out by the fact that, like international terrorism,
it cannot be stamped out which should indicate to a reasonable
person that some of this biggest names in royal circles, the oligarchy,
the plutocracy are running it, even if it is done through intermediaries."
John Coleman in his book "Conspirators'
Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"
"Drug profits are secured
through the ability of the drug cartels to launder and transfer
billions of dollars through the US banking system. The scale and
scope of the US banking-drug cartel alliance surpasses any other
economic activity of the US private banking system."
James Petras
"The Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank [HSBC] and related companies finance the opium trade. In
this, they are acting as designated agents of the British monarchy,
through the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The world illegal drug traffic is controlled by a single group
of men whose intimate ties of ownership, family, and political
collaboration go back 200 years."
www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How
the Drug Empire Works"
"The large international
banks that finance the drug trade, get it and launder it, using
it to prop up their bankrupt international financial system."
from the book "DOPE, INC.",
1992
"The mafia and the CIA
are the same group at the upper levels. In Britain, the MI-6 drug
money is laundered through the Bank of England, Barclays Bank
and other household name companies. The drug money is passed from
account to account until its origins are lost in a huge web of
transactions.
The drug money comes out 'cleaner' but not totally clean. Diamonds
are then bought with this money from the corrupt diamond business
families like the Oppenheimers.
These diamonds are then sold and the drug money is clean."
James Casbolt
"Some of the world's leading private financial institutions
are deeply implicated in the laundering of hundreds of billions
of dollars a year in illegal dope money... Illegal drugs are the
largest commodity in international trade, with the exception of
petroleum, and the annual revenues of the narcotics traffic exceeds
the national product of most of the world's nations, and the revenues
of the largest multinational companies."
from the book "DOPE, INC.",
1992
"The drug activities of the US - and the US-led NATO -
are tightly linked with the NATO expansion and the creation of
US military bases in the protectorates established along the drug-trafficking
and pipeline routes. The best example is the supervised state
of Kosovo used by drug lords to relay narcotics from Afghanistan
to Europe via the Balkan route. The Albanian drug mafia's throughput
is estimated at four to six tons of heroin of the Afghan origin
monthly, the annual revenues being as high as $2 billion. According
to the UN, Europe which is the key market for Afghan opiates absorbs
up to 150 tons of heroin annually, with 35-50 tons going to Russia.
The Albanian mafia is responsible for 75% of heroin supplies to
West Europe and 50% - to the US."
Elena Ponomareva
"Shipments of cocaine are sometimes interdicted and seized.
That is mere window dressing. Often times the shipments seized
belong to a new organization trying to break into the trade. Such
competition is put out of business by informing the authorities
exactly where it is going to enter the U.S. and who the owners
are. The big stuff is never touched; heroin is too expensive."
John Coleman in his book "Conspirators'
Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"
"The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001
was accompanied by restoration of opium for the world market,
a recreation of what happened with the earlier U.S. intervention
of 1979-1980, and before that with the U.S. intervention in Indochina
after 1959, and in Southeast Asia in 1950."
Peter Dale Scott, 2003
"The City of London caters
for those above the law, it operates on the basis of bypassing
democratic society as a whole. This has come about over time where
an extraordinary 'gentlemens agreement' has stood the test of
time. The head of state and his/her governments have the need
of large loans for wars and the like, the City, in exchange for
such commodity has extracted certain privileges the rest of the
population do not enjoy. The end result over the centuries is
that it now has its own financial jurisdiction to do pretty much
as it pleases.
... The City of London has its own private funding and will 'buy-off'
any attempt to erode its powers; any scrutiny of its financial
affairs are put beyond external inspection or audit."
Graham Vanbergen
"A large share of
the multibillion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in
the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks
together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens
launder large amounts of narco-dollars."
Michel Chossudovsky
"Nothing has changed in
the opium-heroin-cocaine trade. It is still run by the same "upper
class" families in Britain and the United States. It is still
a fabulously profitable trade where what seem to be big losses
through seizures by the authorities are written off in paneled
boardrooms in New York, Hong Kong and London over port and cigars
as merely the cost of doing business."
John Coleman in his book "Conspirators'
Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"
"The strengthening of the
global narcotics traffic has fueled other smuggling and related
criminal activities, leading to the consolidation of an international
criminal milieu. Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Russian gangs,
and the Mafias of Italy, America, and Colombia have now combined
into a "worldwide criminal consortium."
Peter Dale Scott, 2003
"The drug "industry"
is run as a single integrated world operation, from the opium
poppy to the nickel bag of heroin sold on an inner-city street
corner. Not only is illegal drug traffic under the control of
a single world network, but opiates traffic in particular is without
doubt the best-controlled production and distribution system of
any commodity in international trade, illegal or legal.
... The drug-related illegal economy is the biggest business in
the world.
... The British monarchy organized most of the Far East to conform
to the drug traffic.
... The Anglo-Dutch "offshore" banking system and related
precious metals and gems trade were designed around illegal money.
... The world drug traffic is a top-down operation under the immediate
control of the British and allied monarchies."
www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How the Drug Empire Works"
"The heroin epidemic that ravaged our cities during the fifties
and sixties originated with the CIA out of Southeast Asia. Almost
from the moment of their founding in 1947, the CIA was giving
covert support to organized drug traffickers in Europe and the
Far East, and eventually the Middle East and Latin America. During
the Vietnam War, heroin was being smuggled into this country in
the bodies of soldiers being flown home."
Jesse Ventura in the book "American
Conspiracies"
"Drug trafficking constitutes the third biggest global
commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade. Supported
by powerful interests, heroin is a multibillion-dollar business,
which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the
hidden objectives of the war In Afghanistan was effectively to
restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels
and exert direct control over the drug routes."
Michel Chossudovsky
"Britain has been involved
in the China opium trade for over two centuries. No one is going
to be so foolish as to rock the boat when millions upon millions
of dollars flow into the bank accounts of the British oligarchists,
and more gold is traded on the Hong Kong gold market than the
combined total traded in London and New York."
John Coleman in his book "The
Committee of 300"
"The drug "industry"
is run as a single integrated world operation, from the opium
poppy to the nickel bag of heroin sold on an inner-city street
corner. Not only is illegal drug traffic under the control of
a single world network, but opiates traffic in particular is without
doubt the best-controlled production and distribution system of
any commodity in international trade, illegal or legal."
www.bibliotecapleyades.net
"The real reason that the drug problem is not eradicated
is because it is being run by the highest families in the entire
world as part of a coordinated gigantic money-making machine.
... The plutocracy controlling British banks held the purse strings
and then, as now, put up a most respectable facade to cover their
true business. No one ever caught them with dirtied hands. They
always had front men, even as they do today, willing to take the
blame if things went awry. Then as now the connections with the
drug trade were tenuous at best. No one was ever able to lay a
finger on the respectable and "noble" banking families
of Britain."
John Coleman in his book "Conspirators'
Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"
PRESERVING ELITE WEALTH
"The Status Quo around
the world - from France to China to the U.S. - is optimized to
protect its Elites and the sprawling Upper-Caste of academics,
managers, think-tank toadies, technocrats, apparatchiks, functionaries,
factotums, lackeys and apologists who serve the Elites, and are
well-paid for enforcing the Status Quo on the disenfranchized
castes below."
Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
"The legal structure of
a family trust differs greatly from public corporations, in that
their focus is not on maximizing short-term quarterly profits
for shareholders, but in maintaining multi-generational wealth
and prestige. Family trusts are increasingly used to manage the
wealth of the world's super-rich dynasties, alongside private
banking institutions and other wealth management and consulting
firms. There is an entire industry dedicated to the management
of money, wealth and investments for the super-rich, and it is
focused largely - and increasingly - on family dynasties."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The lesson is clear: if
you are a thief, steal by the billions or trillions, and then
no one can do anything about it. If you are in the drug trade:
handle only billions (or hundreds of billions) in drug money,
and then you will get away with it. If you don't want to pay taxes,
be a member of the top 0.001% of the world's super-rich and hide
your billions in offshore tax-free accounts. If you want more,
create a global economic crisis, demand to be saved by the state
to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, and then, tell the
state to punish their populations into poverty in order to pay
for your mistakes.
In other words, if you want to indulge your criminal fantasies,
lie and steal, profit from death and drugs, dominate and demand,
be king and command, become the highly-functioning socially-acceptable
sociopath you always knew you could be... think big. Think bank.
Serial killers, bank robbers and drug dealers go to jail; bankers
get bailouts and get an unlimited insurance policy called "too
big to fail."
Jurriaan Maessen, Global Research
"The City of London is
the money-laundering centre of the world's drug trade. In addition,
due to incredibly lax financial laws by the British government,
the London property market is built largely on the laundered money
of crime from all over the world involving hidden tax havens,
most of which are British."
Graham Vanbergen
"More than 170 of the Fortune
500 companies have a Luxembourg branch. A total of $95 billion
in profits from American corporations' overseas operations flowed
through Luxembourg in 2012, the most current statistics from the
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show. On those profits, corporations
paid $1.04 billion in taxes to Luxembourg - just 1.1 percent."
Stephen E. Shay, professor of international
taxation at Harvard Law School, 2014
"The top economic one-tenth
of one percent is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible
wealth, not counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden
in offshore accounts."
David DeGraw
"Pepsi, IKEA, FedEx and
340 other international companies have secured secret deals from
Luxembourg, allowing many of them to slash their global tax bills
while maintaining little presence in the tiny European duchy.
These companies appear to have channeled hundreds of billions
of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in
taxes.
Big companies can book big tax savings by creating complicated
accounting and legal structures that move profits to low-tax Luxembourg
from higher-tax countries where they're headquartered or do lots
of business. In some instances, companies have enjoyed effective
tax rates of less than 1 percent on the profits they've shuffled
into Luxembourg."
report from the International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists
"Pfizer had 40% of its
2013 sales in the U.S., but claimed all of its profits overseas."
Paul Buchhet
"The process of moving
massive amounts of international capital from typical tax havens,
into the U.S., is being driven by a familiar name in the world
of international finance - Rothschild & Co.
Rothschild, a centuries-old European financial institution, manages
the wealth of many of the world's most wealthy families and has
been instrumental in helping move the global elite's wealth from
traditional tax havens like the Bahamas, Switzerland and the British
Virgin Islands to the U.S.
... After opening a trust company in Reno, Nev., Rothschild &
Co. began ushering the massive fortunes of the world's most wealthy
individuals out of typical tax havens, now subject to OECD international
disclosure requirements, and into the Rothschild run U.S. trusts,
which are exempt from the international reporting requirements.
The U.S. Treasury Department takes a very strong stand against
international tax evasion - unless you put that money into a U.S
trust account - which coincidentally is being helmed by Rothschild
& Co."
Jay Syrmopoulos
"The U.S. is effectively
the biggest tax haven in the world."
Andrew Penney, managing director
of Rothschild & Co.
"The incestuous embrace
of privilege and power by entrenched, socially isolated Elites
characterizes failed states and brittle, doomed regimes throughout
history. This is what the Status Quo everywhere is optimized for:
protecting those who have secured the wealth, perquisites and
power by strangling competition, democracy and social mobility."
Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
"Greed has grown so extreme
that even within the top 1% inequality is soaring. The top 1%
of the 1%, the .01%, now has 28% of the 1%'s wealth. When you
factor in hidden wealth, they have an estimated 33% of the 1%'s
wealth. An individual must have over $100 million in wealth to
be in the .01%."
David DeGraw, 2014
"The City of London now
stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global
crime. It is the heart and engine of the offshore haven, with
Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man its european collection centres,
the caribbean and others hoovering up billions of dollars from
all over the globe... It has a dark and shadowy client list; terrorists,
drug barons, arms dealers, politicians, corporations and companies,
millionaires, billionaires - most with something to hide."
Graham Vanbergen, 2016
"Much of the untaxed corporate
foreign income is actually held in U.S. banks and stocks and other
assets. Microsoft, for example, at one point held 93 percent of
its offshore profits in U.S. assets."
Paul Buchhet
"Vested interests everywhere
use this script to maintain the status quo:
1. Control the media so it focuses exclusively on manufactured
"good news". Anything that undermines the dominant narrative
is buried, discredited or ignored.
2. Buy political favors and influence to insure that "reforms"
are superficial public relations exercises rather than than actual
reforms that change the power structure.
3. Rig the accounting, regulations and reporting so any scrutiny
is misdirected or blunted. This enables the status quo to continue
on unfazed, despite the erosion of the economy's fundamentals
and the widening gap between those with power and those who are
powerless."
Charles Hugh-Smith
"As the economic gap between
the plutocrats and everyone else becomes a chasm, plutocrats are
coming to inhabit their own global gated community."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"If you want to know the
true state of our government and where it's heading, follow the
money, and remain vigilant: our kleptocratic Houdinis are hard
at work, seeking to make yet more money vanish from your pockets
- and reappear in theirs."
William J. Astore
"British Overseas Territories
and Crown Dependencies make up around 25 per cent of the world's
tax havens.
Tax havens include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands,
the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands
to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City
of London's crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is
now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have
recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating
openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control."
Graham Vanbergen
"Relative to lower-class
individuals, individuals from upper-class backgrounds behaved
more unethically. Increased resources and independence from others
cause people to prioritize self-interest over others' welfare
and perceive greed as positive and beneficial, which in turn gives
rise to increased unethical behavior."
Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC
Berkeley
"Extractive states are
controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much
wealth as they can from the rest of society and to maintain their
own hold on power."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"Today, as the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer, it seems we are approaching a
new Middle Ages in America, as inequality increasingly spreads
through the land. It is as if the super-rich are like the new
royalty and the top 1 percent are living in mansions like the
old castles of kings in the kingdoms that eventually melded into
Europe and the U.K."
Gini Graham Scott
PERPETUAL WAR
REGIME CHANGE, WAR PROFITEERING,
PROXY WARS, WAR ON DRUGS, WAR ON TERRORISM, PRIVATE MERCENARY
ARMIES, ECONOMIC WARFARE, CYBER WARFARE
"The permanent possibility
of war is the foundation for stable government; it supplies the
basis for general acceptance of political authority. It has enabled
societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has
ensured the subordination of the citizen to the state, by virtue
of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood.
No modern political ruling group has successfully controlled its
constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credibility
of an external threat of war."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"The war against a foreign
country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going
to profit from it."
George Orwell
"The Democrats, like the
Republicans, are pledged to an even bigger U.S. military. It's
good for business, if your business is war or war-related, and
it's good for votes - especially the votes, active support, and
political contributions of the growing group of Americans whose
livelihoods, and claim to some sort of social status, depend on
the continuation of our foreign policy of perpetual war."
Justin Raimondo, 2008
"The armed forces have
embedded themselves so deeply into the country that they have
almost become the country. America is little more than a funding
mechanism for what may be called the military-industrial-intelligence-media-Israeli
complex. Some of these entities belong to the military (NSA).
Some depend on it (Lockheed-Martin). Some use it to their own
ends (Israel), But the military is the central infection from
which the other symptoms flow. Congress? A storefront, a subcommittee
of the Knesset. Factories, jobs, contracts, towns depend on military
spending. "
Fred Reed, 2018
"The military/industrial/governmental
complex is perfectly positioned to profit handsomely from both
the endless war on terror and the privatization of public resources,
with nary a complaint from government officials and next to no
meaningful media coverage of the long term ramifications of such
'profit centers'."
Geraldine Perry, 2009
"Since 1945, what you call
the military-industrial complex has been a terribly important
vehicle in American development. It has been the center of what
we call military Keynesianism. It's the one sector where deficit
financing was thoroughly permitted, and it was the one sector
under Reagan that expanded immensely and has never been let go
of, in spite of the end of the Cold War."
David Harvey, 2009
"Retired senior officers
with financial ties to the military-industrial complex teamed
up with the Pentagon to sell the case for war on the major news
networks. Ultimately, the rottenest apples are at the top of the
barrel, and that's certainly the case in the military. The men
involved in the military analyst program were, by and large, retired
generals, many of them retired four-stars. They were sending American
kids into harm's way to line their own pockets."
Jeff Huber, 2009
"President Dwight Eisenhower
warned of the increasing power and influence of the military industrial
complex and it seems his worst fears have come true. He believed
in a strong national defense, but warned that the building up
of permanent military and weapons industries could prove dangerous
if their influence got out of hand. After all, if you make your
money on war, peace does you no good. With trillions of dollars
at stake, there is tremendous incentive to keep the decision makers
fearful of every threat in the world, real or imagined, present
or future, no matter how ridiculous and far-fetched."
Ron Paul, 2009
"An evolving military-industrial
complex, a partnership of interlocking government and corporate
networks, has used public wealth to enrich itself. The manufacturing
part of this complex rarely produces anything people live in,
wear, or eat - armaments do not meet civilian needs. In fact,
there exists a dramatic gulf between a healthy economy and a social
order based on military spending."
Saul Landau and Nelson P. Valdes,
2010
"Washington has a vested
interest in preserving the status quo, no matter how much it costs
or where it leads. For the military-industrial complex, there
are contracts to win and buckets of money to be made. For those
who dwell in the bowels of the national security state, there
are prerogatives to protect. For elected officials, there are
campaign contributors to satisfy. For appointed officials, civilian
and military, there are ambitions to be pursued."
Andrew Bacevich, 2010
"Because of the enormous
dollar potential of the war in Vietnam to the great military-industrial
complex of the United States and because of other threats to the
power elite, it had become absolutely necessary, for them, to
bring about a coup d'etat (JFK assassination) on the streets of
Dallas."
L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA,
Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, 1996
"The military-industrial
complex today finances and dominates both political parties, as
well as dominating our international policy."
Peter Dale Scott, 2011
"President Eisenhower recognized
that the United States was turning into a military-industrial-congressional
dominated national security state. And the Republicans have cheered
that transmogrification. They've gained their political power
from helping it move in the right direction when it needs to be
moved. The Republican Party leadership live, drink, breath and
sleep the military-industrial complex. They love war because it
keeps them in power."
Lawrence Wilkerson
"The so-called war on terror
has been a monumental fraud from the very start. The U.S. military-industrial
complex needs terrorists in order to necessitate neo-colonial
expansion abroad and domestic oppression at home, which is why
the U.S. government does its best to create and sustain them in
virtually every corner of the Middle East and North Africa."
Paul Joseph Watson, 2014
"The ideology that military
activities may become a profitable enterprise leads to the realization
that peace is the main enemy of the military-industrial complex.
The military-industrial complex would be put out of business by
lasting peaceful conditions because the development, production,
marketing and use of military equipment would be not needed."
Julie Lévesque, 2014
"'Controlled' wars tend
to safeguard the fortunes of war profiteers and beneficiaries
of military spending - mainly the military-security-industrial
complex and major banks."
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, 2014
"The ability of private
military companies who profit massively from war to finance elections,
lobby the government and manipulate public opinion represents
a dangerous evolution of the military-industrial complex."
Jeremy Kuzmarov, 2014
"American leadership is
ruthlessly pursuing immoral wars all over the world with the intent
of creating outside enemies to focus public anger on, as a conscious
diversion away from the criminality happening domestically. As
an added bonus, the intelligence-military-industrial complex makes
an incredible sum of money. The end result: serfs are distracted
with inane nationalistic fervor, while the "elites"
earn billions."
Michael Krieger, 2015
"Once the Cold War ended,
the ruling class sought enemies to keep their military-industrial
complex and Wall Street financiers enriched and happy. 9/11 was
used to further that agenda, as the war on terror will never end.
Perpetual conflict is a chief goal of the establishment. Both
parties continue to promote war and increase the profits of the
military-industrial complex."
blacklistednews.com, 2015
"Continuing small wars
(or the threat thereof) are essential for the corporate component
of the military-industrial-congressional complex. These companies
have no alternative means to survive."
former Pentagon insider Franklin
C. "Chuck" Spinney
"The American citizenry
has no say over the military-industrial complex, which is autonomous
and out of control. If the Complex wants war with Russia or China,
we will have war with Russia or China.
The military-industrial complex drives foreign policy, and in
directions of no benefit to America or Americans.
We are being forced to pay through the nose for endless wars that
do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us,
pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police
state that serves only to imprison us within its walls."
Fred Reed, 2018
"The profits behind the
war industry are what drives the demand for war.
Enemies are always needed, and the corporate media will tell us
how evil the new enemy is. If it's not communism it's terrorism.
For those who direct the war industry, terrorism is much more
flexible than communism or other so-called enemies.
The United States will always be at war because war is so profitable."
Christian Sorenson
"War is the consumer of
last resort. Wars can burn up excess capacity, shift global markets,
generate monopoly rents, and return future labour to a state of
helplessness and reduced."
Cathal Haughian
"American leadership is
ruthlessly pursuing immoral wars all over the world with the intent
of creating outside enemies to focus public anger on, as a conscious
diversion away from the criminality happening domestically. As
an added bonus, the intelligence-military-industrial complex makes
an incredible sum of money. The end result: serfs are distracted
with inane nationalistic fervor, while the "elites"
earn billions."
retired U.S. Major General Robert
H. Scales
"The United States has
become the largest single seller of arms and munitions on the
planet."
Chris Hedges
"I spent thirty-three years
in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man
for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I
was a racketeer for capitalism.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house
of Brown Brothers in 1910-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially
Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light
to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City
[Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half
a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
In China in 1927 l helped to see to it that Standard Oil went
its way unmolested.
I had a swell racket. l was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions.
l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do
was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated
on three continents."
General Smedley Butler, former
US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935
"Wealth concentration is
only one aspect of our increasingly kleptocratic system. War profiteering
by corporations is another."
William J. Astore
"Since the keystone of
the international banking empires has been government bonds, it
has been in the interest of international bankers to encourage
government debt. The higher The debt the more the interest. Nothing
drives government deeply into debt like a war; and it has not
been an uncommon practice among international bankers to finance
both sides of the bloodiest military conflicts."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"There are factions in
many governments that crave a state of endless war because that
is when power is least constrained and profit most abundant."
John Jay
"I spent thirty-three years
and four months in active service in the country's most agile
military force, the Marines. I served in all ranks from second
lieutenant to major general. And during that period I spent most
of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for
Wall Street and the bankers. I was a racketeer, a gangster for
capitalism.
... I helped make Mexico safe for American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place
for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped
in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I
helped purify Nicaragua for the benefit of the banking house of
Brown Brothers and Co. in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for the sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras
"right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China,
in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Major General Medley Butler
"The revolving door between
government defense leadership positions and leadership positions
in the defense contracting community has become a fixture of Washington
life.
... The military defense industry's tendency toward consolidation,
especially in the last quarter century, has given a few individuals
greater influence. In 2006, only a dozen or so companies around
the world accounted for the majority of international defense
revenues... The leaders of the largest military defense industry
firms emerged as a clique of powerful individuals, each with his
own ties to government.
... These leaders play a dominant market role and assumed the
responsibility once held by public institutions for decisions
that play a role in shaping a nation's defense doctrine. They
are particularly active a advocates of expensive weapons systems
such as carrier battle groups, major aircraft, and high-tech space
weaponry, all of which are both profitable and offer maximum prestige
to service leaders. Real change and reevaluation are resisted."
David Rothkopf
"Capitalism requires World
War because Capitalism requires profit and cannot afford the unemployed."
Cathal Haughian
"Endless war has ruined
our economy. It benefits a handful of elites, while levying a
tax on the vast majority of Americans.
Congress members - part of the super-elite which has made money
hand over fist during this economic downturn - are heavily invested
in the war industry, and routinely trade on inside information
perhaps even including planned military actions.
No wonder the American government is making the state of war permanent,
and planning to unleash new, widespread wars in the near future."
www.globalresearch.ca
"The arbitrary nature of
war expenditures and of other military activities make them ideally
suited to control the essential class relationships. Obviously,
if the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery
would be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction. Until
it is developed, the continuance of the war system must be assured,
if for no other reason, among others, than to preserve whatever
quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an incentive,
as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization
of power."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"Wars are fought to control
strategic routes, to open markets, and to gain access to natural
resources."
George Draffan
"Since World War II, 90
percent of the casualties of war are unarmed civilians, a third
of them children. Our victims have done nothing to us. From Palestine
to Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to wherever our next target
may be, their murders are not collateral damage. They are the
nature of modern warfare. They don't hate us because of our freedoms.
They hate us because every day, we are funding and committing
crimes against humanity.
The so-called 'War on Terror' is a cover for our military aggression
to gain control of the resources for Western nations. This is
sending the poor of this country to kill the poor of those Muslim
countries. This is trading blood for oil. This is genocide, and
to most of the world, we are the terrorists.
... Our soldiers don't sacrifice for duty, honor, and country.
They sacrifice for Kellogg, Brown, and Root. They don't fight
for America-they fight for their lives and their buddies beside
them because we put them in a war zone. They're not defending
our freedoms-they are laying the foundations for permanent military
bases to defend the freedoms of ExxonMobil and British Petroleum.
They're not establishing democracy; they're establishing the basis
for an economic occupation to continue after the military occupation
has ended."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, in a speech to
the Congressional Progressive Caucus, April 27, 2006
"The dangerous patriot
is the the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm
for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals
of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of
patriotism, which identifies numerous enemies who can only be
dealt with through military power and which equates the national
honor with military victory." -
American lawyer and U.S. Navy Reserve
CommanderJames A. Donovan
"As the Founders all recognized,
nothing vests elites with power - and profit - more than a state
of war."
Glenn Greenwald
"Of all the enemies to
public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because
it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the
parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies,
and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the
many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary
power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out
offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means
of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force,
of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may
be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities
of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy
of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could
preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
James Madison
"The Rothschilds became
incredibly wealthy during the nineteenth century by financing
governments to fight each other."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The war on terrorism is
not only a war against innocent people in other countries, but
also a war on the people of the United States: a war on our liberties,
a war on our standard of living. The wealth of the country is
being stolen from the people and handed over to the superrich.
The lives of our young are being stolen. And the thieves are in
the White House."
Howard Zinn
"The global elite thrives
on war and widespread human misery, on death and destruction by
design."
Prof. Mujahid Kamran
"An acceptable economic
surrogate for the war system will require the expenditure of resources
for completely nonproductive purposes at a level comparable to
that of the military expenditures otherwise demanded by the size
and complexity of each society... A viable political substitute
for war must posit a generalized external menace to each society
of a nature and degree sufficient to require the organization
and acceptance of political authority... A credible substitute
for war must generate an omnipresent and readily understood fear
of personal destruction. This fear must be of a nature and degree
sufficient to ensure adherence to societal values to the full
extent that they are acknowledged to transcend the value of individual
human life."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"The CIA manages the highly
lucrative international drug smuggling business.
Ever since the Iran-Contra Affair of the 1980's when CIA got caught
red-handed running drugs for guns during the Reagan years, and
financing, arming, and training death squad commandos throughout
Central America, the US government has always played an integral
and active role in covert drug smuggling operations generating
over the decades trillions in drug money revenue laundered through
the central banking cabal.
The CIA controls and manages global drug smuggling from the Afghan
poppy fields to the coca plantations run by Central-South American-Mexican
drug cartels that supply and feed the constant demand for illicit
drugs into both North America as well as Europe. "
Joachim Hagopian
"The corporate economy
and the military are codependent, and the military has become
an integral and permanent part of the global - and especially
the U.S. - economy."
George Draffan
"Wars should be directed
so that the nations on both sides should be further in our debt."
Amschel Mayer Rothschild, 1774
"Retired senior military officers typically line up to
cash in on the kleptocratic equivalent of welfare, peddling their
"expertise" in return for impressive corporate and Pentagon
payouts that supplement their six-figure pensions."
William J. Astore
"Nations in general will
make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by
it."
John Jay in Federalist No 4
"Many countries, including
the United States and the United Kingdom, are not signatories
to the 1989 United Nations Mercenary Convention banning the use
of mercenaries."
www.special-ops.org
"For financial or political
reasons, Empires have always used external militarized cells and
mercenaries to commit unsavoury acts under a flag different than
the monarchy, nation-state, or private corporation who was directing
them behind the scenes.
Ruthless and unconventional "asymmetric" enemies are
nothing new to the United States."
writer Patrick Henningsen
"Academi is a most harmless-sounding
name, but don't be fooled: The company is actually the infamous
Blackwater. The company's history of atrocities runs far and deep.
The name "Academi," which has been in use since 2011,
marks the second time the company has attempted to whitewash its
name in a "corporate restructuring". Judging by the
fact that they have already been forced to admit to at least 17
federal criminal charges and pay millions of dollars in fines,
it seems it's just a matter of time before they have to come up
with an even less threatening name. Though with their reputation
at this point, there probably is no name that could soften their
public image."
www.listverse.com
"Without war, no government
has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its 'legitimacy',
or right to rule its society. The possibility of war provides
the sense of external necessity without which no government can
long remain in power."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"The U.S. military has
won the ideological war. The nation sees human and social problems
as military problems. To fight terrorists Americans have become
terrorists. Peace is for the weak. War is for the strong. Hypermasculinity
has triumphed over empathy."
Chris Hedges
"The private military company
(PMC) is the contemporary strand of the mercenary trade, providing
logistics, soldiers, military training, and other services. Thus,
PMC contractors are civilians (in governmental, international,
and civil organizations) authorized to accompany an army to the
field; hence, the term civilian contractor. Nevertheless, PMCs
may use armed force."
www.special-ops.org
"The US intentionally armed
and funded terrorists in the Middle East to create a terrorist
mercenary army."
Tony Cartalucci
"One of the more terrifying
private militaries is Executive Outcomes. This South African company
has been sighted in most African war zones, where it is said to
hold high influence. Executive Outcomes mercenaries have been
seen in Sierra Leone, Angola, Uganda, Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia,
Namibia, Lesotho and, of course, South Africa. Although they officially
state their only mission is bringing peace, they have been suspected
of several shady activities ranging from Sierra Leone-based oil
company shenanigans to diamond dealings with the jewel giant De
Beers.
The company is notorious for targeting the client country's mineral-rich
regions, often regaining and securing control of gold, oil and
diamond regions before paying attention to other matters. Some
whisper they don't always get around to returning these possessions
to the country. Executive Outcomes is said to own gold mines in
Uganda, oil drilling facilities in Ethiopia and a variety of other
peacetime business ventures in the other countries it has fought
for."
www.listverse.com
"The military function
of the war system serves simply to defend or advance the 'national
interest' by means of organized violence. It is often necessary
for a national military establishment to create a need for its
unique powers... And a healthy military apparatus requires regular
'exercise', by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent
its atrophy."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"The Romans called the
people who lived outside the Roman Empire barbarians. In the 4th
century AD the Roman Army had considerable difficulty in stopping
these Barbarians from entering the Roman Empire.
The Romans were forced to increase the size of their army. By
the end of the 4th century AD it had grown to 600,000 men.
Emperors were forced to recruit slaves, gladiators and criminals.
It was also decided to employ barbarian mercenaries. This created
long-term problems as the barbarians did not always remain loyal
to their Roman paymasters.
In AD 476, Odoacer, leader of the barbarian mercenaries in the
Roman army, overthrew Emperor Romulus Augustulus, and installed
himself as King of Italy. The Roman Empire in the west had come
to an end."
www.spartacus-educational.com
"In 2006, a U.S. congressional
report listed a number of private military companies and other
enterprises that have signed contracts to carry out anti-narcotics
operations and related activities as part of Plan Colombia. DynCorp
was among those contracted by the State Department, while others
signed contracts with the Defense Department. Other companies
from different countries, including Israel, have also signed contracts
with the Colombian Defense Ministry to carry out security or military
activities."
www.special-ops.org
"There is something peculiarly
hypocritical about the occasional condemnation of mercenary activity
issued by various British Governments over the past quarter of
a century. British governments have always used mercenaries whenever
it suit their interests and indeed continue to do so even now.
"
Anthony Mockler in his book 'The
New Mercenaries"
"In February 2002, a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(FCO) report about private military companies (PMCs) noted that
the demands of the military service from the UN and international
civil organizations might mean that it is cheaper to pay PMCs
than use soldiers. "
www.special-ops.org
"No war ever fought by
the US military has been about freedom. The only reason an empire
ever fights wars is to maintain empire.
... Every year, the establishment hijacks Memorial Day, Independence
Day and Veterans Day - not only to audaciously commemorate the
war criminals that send our brothers and sisters off to needlessly
die - but to justify decades of bloodshed and militarism while
paving the way for decades more.
... People don't join the military to be called heroes, or because
they think they're fighting evil incarnate. Most do so because
there are no jobs and no hope.
... The next time you hear someone say "Support the Troops",
ask what they're doing to make sure there will be no more bloodshed,
no more body bags and no more war."
Abby Martin , 2013
"Iraq is a money making
machine. All you have to do is look around. All the companies
that work over here are getting rich."
Jon Coté worked for military
contractor Crescent Security
"War spending, considered
pragmatically, has been a consistently positive factor in the
rise of gross national product and of individual productivity...
No combination of techniques for controlling employment, production,
and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare
to war in effectiveness. It is, and has been, the essential economic
stabilizer of modern societies."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
PRIVITIZATION OF THE
COMMONS
"With privatization comes
a kind of collective amnesia about the potential democratic role
of government, the importance of the social contract, and the
importance of public values. For instance, war, intelligence operations,
prisons, schools, transportation systems, and a range of other
operations once considered public have been outsourced or simply
handed over to private contractors who are removed from any sense
of civic and political accountability. The social contract and
the institutions that give it meaning have been transformed into
entitlements administered and colonized by largely the corporate
interests and the financial
elite.
... War, intelligence operations, prisons, schools, transportation
systems, and a range of other operations once considered public
have been outsourced or simply handed over to private contractors
who are removed from any sense of civic and political accountability.
The social contract and the institutions that give it meaning
have been transformed into entitlements administered and colonized
by largely the corporate interests and the financial elite."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"A global financial cabal
engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble [2008], illegally
shifted vast amounts of capital out of the US; and used 'privatization'
as a form of piracy -- a pretext to move government assets to
private investors at below-market prices and then shift private
liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability
holder... Clearly, there was a global financial coup d'etat underway."
Catherine Austin Fitts
"Although water has been
managed as a commons throughout human history and across diverse
cultures, and although most communities manage water resources
as common property or have access to water as a commonly shared
public good even today, privatization of water resources is gaining
momentum."
Vandana Shiva
"Water has become big business
for global corporations, which see limitless markets in growing
water scarcity and demand. The two major players in the water
industry are the French companies Vivendi Environment and Suez
Lyonnaise des Eaux, whose empires extend to 120 countries. Vivendi
is the water giant, with a turnover of $17.1 billion. Suez had
a turnover of $5.1 billion in 1996."
Vandana Shiva
"Water is of course the
most important raw material we have today in the world, but It's
a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply
for the population. And there are two different opinions on the
matter.
The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the
NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means
that as a human being you should have a right to water. That's
an extreme solution.
The other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other,
and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value."
former Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck
"The erosion of water rights
is now a global phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, ambitious,
World Bank-driven privatization programs have emerged in Argentina,
Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, and Nigeria. The World Bank has also
introduced privatization of water systems in India. In Chile,
it has imposed a loan condition to guarantee a 33 percent profit
margin to the French company Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux."
Vandana Shiva
"We are mining our ground
water faster than we can replenish it, sucking it to grow water
guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities
who dump an astounding 700 trillion liters of land-based water
into oceans every year as waste.
The global mining industry sucks up another 800 trillion liters
which it also leaves behind as poison and fully one-third of global
water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water
to feed the world."
Maude Barlow
"I believe it's better
to give a foodstuff a value so that we're all aware it has its
price, and then that one should take specific measures for the
part of the population that has no access to water."
former Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck
"Knowing there will not
be enough food and water for all in the near future, wealthy countries
and global investment pension and hedge funds are buying up land
and water, fields and forests in the Global South, creating a
new wave of invasive colonialism that will have huge geopolitical
ramifications. Rich countries faced by food shortages have already
bought up an area in Africa alone more than twice the size of
the United Kingdom."
Maude Barlow
RESOURCE EXPLOITATION
AND ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION
"For America the chief
geopolitical prize is Eurasia. About 75 percent of the world's
people live in Eurasia Eurasia accounts for about 60 percent of
the world's GNP and about three fourths of the world's known energy
resources."
Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book
"The Grand Chessboard"
"Bank of America, JP Morgan
Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup own Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum,
Exxon, in tandem with Deusche Bank, Banque Paribas, Barclays and
other European old money behemoths."
Dean Henderson in his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf"
"The US-led war in the
broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control
over more than sixty percent of the world's reserves of oil and
natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control
over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. Muslim countries
including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates,
Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess between 66.2 and 75.9 percent
of total oil reserves."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2012
"ExxonMobil's energy reserves
span six continents and produce nearly twice as much oil and gas
every day as all of Kuwait... earned nearly $40 billion in profits,
more than the combined GDP of Yemen and Bahrain, and more than
any other company in history."
David Rothkopf
"The Rothschild, Rockefeller
and Warburg banking combines control Big Oil... Royal Dutch/Shell
is controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel
families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch
House of Orange."
Dean Henderson from his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"Control oil and you control
nations."
Henry Kissinger
"The United States handled
the quadrupling of oil prices in the 1970s by arranging, by means
of secret agreements with the Saudis, to recycle petrodollars
back into the U.S. economy. The first of these deals assured a
special and ongoing Saudi stake in the health of the U.S. dollar;
the second secured continuing Saudi support for the pricing of
all OPEC oil in dollars. These two deals assured that the U.S.
economy would not be impoverished by OPEC oil price hikes. The
heaviest burdens would be borne instead by the economies of less
developed countries."
Peter Dale Scott, 2003
"You will not read about
the Club of the Isles in any textbook or popular magazine. It
is unincorporated and it has no membership lists. Yet, as an informal
association of predominantly European-based royal households and
princely families, the Club of the Isles commands an estimated
$10 trillion in assets. It lords over such corporate giants as
Royal Dutch Shell, Imperial Chemical Industries, Lloyds of London,
Unilever, Lonrho, Rio Tinto Zinc, and Anglo American DeBeers.
It dominates the world supply of petroleum, gold, diamonds, and
many other vital raw materials; and deploys these assets not merely
in the pursuit of wealth, but as resources at the disposal of
its geopolitical agenda. Its goal: to reduce the human population
from its current level of over 5 billion people to below 1 billion
people within the next two to three generations in the interest
of retaining their own global power and the feudal system upon
which that power is based."
"The Coming Fall of the House
of Windsor" an article from The New Federalist newspaper,
1994
"The oil market is now cornered
by five major companies - Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, British
Petroleum-Amoco-Arco, Royal Dutch Shell and Conoco-Phillips -
which control over 60 percent of refinery output.
... The operating strategy is to force independent refiners out
of business, tighten gasoline supplies, and then jack up the price.
Finally, when the profit skyrockets, take ads in newspapers to
claim that the profit is reasonable."
Ravi Batra in his book "The
New Golden Age", 2007
"The US-led deadly civil
wars and coup d'etats in Venezuela and Ukraine as well as Libya
and Syria mass terrorize and destroy societies into defenseless
dependency so that their resources, lands and markets are available
for transnational corporate exploitation."
Professor Mujahid Kamran
from the book "DOPE, INC.",
1992
"The Persian Gulf/Caspian
Sea area is where most of the world's remaining oil is located
- approximately 70 percent of known petroleum reserves. Whoever
controls Persian Gulf oil controls the world's economy."
Michael Klare in his book "Pox
Americana"
"The Four Horsemen of Oil
[British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil]
are the top four retailers of gas in the US and own every major
pipeline in the world and the vast majority of oil tankers...
Today they control over half the world's uranium reserves, key
to fueling nuclear power plants... Exxon Mobil is the leading
coal producer in the US and has the second largest coal reserves."
Dean Henderson from his book "Big
Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"
"Right after World War
II ... the United States moved to dominate a global system for
the production and distribution of oil. Starting with the Truman
Doctrine in 1946, U.S. geostrategic thinking was oil based. What
began as a strategy for containment of the Soviet Union has become
more and more nakedly a determination to control the oil resources
of the world. This pursuit has progressively deformed the domestic
U.S. economy, rendering it more and more unbalanced and dependent
on heavy military expenditures in remote and ungovernable areas-most
recently Afghanistan."
Peter Dale Scott, 2003
"The "Club of the
Isles" is an informal association of predominantly European-based
royal households including the Queen [of England]. The Club of
the Isles commands an estimated $10 trillion in assets. It lords
over such corporate giants as Royal Dutch Shell, Imperial Chemical
Industries, Lloyds of London, Unilever, Lonrho, Rio Tinto Zinc,
and Anglo American DeBeers. It dominates the world supply of petroleum,
gold, diamonds, and many other vital raw materials; and deploys
these assets at the disposal of its geopolitical agenda."
Henry Makow
FOOD INSECURITY
"CONTROL FOOD AND YOU CONTROL
THE PEOPLE"
"95 percent of all grain
reserves in the world [in 1974] were under the control of six
multinational agribusiness corporations--Cargill Grain Company,
Continental Grain Company, Cook Industries Inc., Dreyfus, Bunge
Company and Archer-Daniel Midland. All of them were American-based
companies."
F. William Engdahl
"Cargill and Continental,
control 45-50% of the world's grain trade."
Richard Freeman
"Destroying food sovereignty
in the global South is a common practice used by the global North
through international bodies like the World Bank and the IMF.
The goal is to keep the South dependent on the North and create
a market for exportation, deceptively labelled "food aid"
for photo ops and to conceal the real intent: dumping."
Julie Lévesque, 2015
"By the early years of
the new century, it was clear that no more than four giant chemical
multinational companies had emerged as global players in the game
to control patents on the very basic food products that most people
in the world depend on for their daily nutrition--corn, soybeans,
rice, wheat, even vegetables and fruits and cotton."
F. William Engdahl
"The Club of the Isles
is a House of Windsor-led Anglo-Dutch-Swiss cartel. The cartel's
Big Six grain trading companies own and control 95% of America's
wheat exports, 95% of its corn exports, 90% of its oats exports,
and 80% of its sorghum exports. A few smaller companies, almost
all in the grain cartel's orbit, control the remaining market
share. The grain companies' control over the American grain market
is absolute."
Richard Freeman, Executive Intelligence
Review, 1995
"Henry Kissinger introduced
the idea of using "food as a weapon" into United States
foreign policy."
F. William Engdahl
"Nestlé Corp., S.A.,
based in Vevey and Cham (near Geneva), Switzerland, and Borden,
Inc., based in Columbus, Ohio, are the two largest exporters of
whole milk powder in the world. Founded in 1867, Nestlé
grew significantly in 1905, when it merged with the Anglo-Swiss
Condensed Milk Company, also of Switzerland.. All told, it is
the biggest food company in the world. In 1994, there were 13
countries in which Nestlé had sales of 1 billion Swiss
francs or more, including all advanced sector nations. Its total
1994 sales were SF 56.9 billion, or $45.5 billion. Its 1994 profits
were $4.8 billion, bigger than all but a half-dozen companies."
Richard Freeman
"Control food and you control
the people."
Henry Kissinger
"President Clinton and
other recent White House tenants condemned Haiti to a future of
endemic poverty through a self-serving U.S. rice export policy."
Julie Lévesque, from a study
of the economic liberalization strategies imposed by the U.S.
on Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s
"Cargill, which had $51
billion in annual sales in 1994, has a dominant position in many
aspects of the world food trade. It is the world's and the United
States' number-one grain exporter, and has a market share of 25-30%
in each of several commodities. It is the world's number-one cotton
trader; the number-one U.S. owner of grain elevators (340); the
number-one U.S. manufacturer of corn-based, high-protein animal
feeds (through subsidiary Nutrena Mills); the number-two U.S.
wet corn miller and U.S. soybean crusher; the number-two Argentine
grain exporter (10% of market); the number-three U.S. flour miller
(18% of market), U.S. meatpacker (18% of market), U.S. pork packer/slaughterer,
and U.S. commercial animal feeder; the number-three French grain
exporter (15-18% of the market); and the number-six U.S. turkey
producer. It also has a fleet of 420 barges, 11 towboats, 2 huge
vessels that sail the Great Lakes, 12 ocean-going ships, 2,000
railroad hopper cars, and 2,000 tank cars."
Richard Freeman
"Terminator seeds had been
designed to prevent the germination of harvested grains as seeds...
This technology would block farmers in developing countries from
saving their own seed for re-sowing."
F. William Engdahl
"Ten to twelve pivotal
companies, assisted by another three dozen, run the world's food
supply. They are the key components of the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food
cartel, which is grouped around Britain's House of Windsor. Led
by the six leading grain companies-Cargill, Continental, Louis
Dreyfus, Bunge and Born, André, and Archer Daniels Midland/Töpfer
- the Club of the Isles - a House of Windsor-led oligarchy, has
complete domination over world cereals and grains supplies, from
wheat to corn and oats, from barley to sorghum and rye. But it
also controls meat, dairy, edible oils and fats, fruits and vegetables,
sugar, and all forms of spices."
Richard Freeman, Executive Intelligence
Review, 1995
GLOBAL GOVERNMENT
"China and Europe cooperate
on many levels and support each others oligarchical systems, but
on the other hand they are major competitors along with the United
States. A lot of the structural changes being implemented by the
European Union's technocratic elite and political leaders, like
austerity measures, are designed to make Europe more competitive,
impoverishing their populations, undertaking structural reforms
to increase labor flexibility, dismantling labor protections,
benefits, regulations, union rights, workers rights, which makes
them a poor exploitable cheap labor force more capable of competing
with China.
China is on the other end of this labor spectrum, where their
labor costs have increased due to popular unrest and protests,
forcing wages to increase in China. China wants to develop a consumer
economy rather than be an export oriented economy. While China
is moving itself up the economic ladder, Europe is pushing itself
down, as they try to find some kind of level playing field, in
order to compete more as equals."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2014
"Who shall rule the world:
the emerging 1% as a financial oligarchy, or elected governments.
The two sets of aims are antithetical: rising living standards
and national independence, or a renting economy, austerity and
international dependency."
Michael Hudson
"Big government is the
necessary ally of monopoly, and world government is the goal of
the cartelists who are the quiet, seemingly philanthropic sponsors
of the U.N..
... Everything the cartels and multi-national companies do is
in furtherance of one or both of their two objectives: the creation
of greater wealth for those who control them; and the coalescing
of political power into a true world government - with themselves
in control from behind the scenes."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"If you wish to establish
national monopolies, you must control national governments. If
you wish to establish international monopolies or cartels, you
must control a world government."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"If the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) is adopted, it will be the most important step toward a
one world economic system that we have ever seen.
... The TPP is not just an economic treaty. It is basically a
gigantic end run around Congress. If adopted, this treaty will
fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare,
copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards,
civil liberties and so much more.
Michael Snyder
"About two hundred years
ago, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was
what was called the "great divergence" as industrialization
made some economies rich. Western empires forced many developing
countries to deindustrialize, and to remain as colonial export-oriented
economies, while the colonial powers industrialized to advance
their economies. This created a great divergence between what
we call the third world, developing, emerging economies and the
developed, advanced economies - Western Europe, United States
and Japan.
Now there is a process of convergence, as countries such as China,
Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, and others rise economically.
The G20 is trying to advance the process of global convergence
by allowing the twenty largest economies in the world to try to
manage the global economic system in a process called global governance."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Today's world is ruled
by a myriad of multinational corporations and financial institutions
that belong to a network of private round table organisations
that stretch across the planet. There exists an international
ruling elite that has been building an economic-corporate empire
for over a century, which oppresses any dissent to their agenda."
Steven MacMillan
We shall have World Government,
whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World
Government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
international banker James Warburg
testifying before the United States Senate on Feb. 7, 1950
"Oligarchs and the centralized
institutions they control pose the greatest threat to humanity
at this time. A world created in their image will be at best a
technocratic, fascist dictatorship, and at worst end in a nuclear
holocaust."
Michael Krieger
"The wheels now are in motion to create a world political
entity... With possession of all nuclear weapons, that super-state
would be so powerful that no man and no disarmed nation-state
could resist its edicts.
... However, before it would be possible to merge the United States
with the rest of world, it would be necessary to bring their economies
and standards of living into line. That means massive foreign
aid to the less developed nations to bring them up, and all kinds
of wasteful spending, exhausting wars, and productivity-crippling
restrictions to bring the United States down."
G. Edward Griffin, 2011
"TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership)
details
* domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g.,
overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign
investors' right to sue governments in international tribunals
that would overrule the national sovereignty)
* environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution,
sustainability)
* financial deregulation (e.g., more power and privileges to the
bankers and financiers)
o food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition
of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)
* Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)
* Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)
* labour (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating
domestic jobs abroad)
* patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable
medicine)
* public access to essential services may be restricted due to
investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)"
Michael Snyder
[from a Malaysian news source}
"There is a transnational
ruling class, a "Superclass", that agrees on establishing
a world government. The middle class is targeted for elimination,
because most of the world has no middle class, and to fully integrate
and internationalize a middle class, would require industrialization
and development in Africa, and certain places in Asia and Latin
America. The goal of the Superclass is not to lose their wealth
and power to a transnational middle class, but rather to extinguish
the notion of a middle class, and transnationalize a lower, uneducated,
labor oriented class, through which they will secure ultimate
wealth and power.
The global economic crisis serves these ends, as whatever remaining
wealth the middle class holds is in the process of being eliminated,
and as the crisis progresses, the middle classes of the world
will suffer, while a great percentage of lower classes of the
world, poverty-stricken even prior to the crisis, will suffer
the greatest, most probably leading to a massive reduction in
population levels, particularly in the "underdeveloped"
or "Third World" states."
Andrew Gavin Marshall in the book
"The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the
XXI Century"
WHO WILL SUFFER IN THE
GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY?
AUSTERITY, UNEMPLOYMENT,
ECONOMIC DECLINE, AUTHORITARIANISM
"The Federal Reserve controls
our money supply and interest rates, and thereby manipulates the
entire economy - creating inflation or deflation, recession or
boom, and sending the stock market up or down at whim... Between
1923 and 1929, the Federal Reserve expanded (inflated) the money
supply by sixty-two percent. Much of this new money was used to
bid the stock market up to dizzying heights. In 1929, the Federal
Reserve Board reversed its easy money policy and began raising
the discount rate. The balloon which had been inflated constantly
for nearly seven years was about to be exploded."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"The moment China, the
oil-rich states, and other international investors stop buying
U.S. Treasury Bonds, the dollar will become junk. Inflation will
rocket upward. We will become Weimar Germany.
... As our financial crisis unravels, and our currency becomes
worthless, there will be a loss of confidence in the traditional
mechanisms that regulate society. When money becomes worthless,
so does government. All traditional standards and beliefs are
shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned
upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the
gangsters, profiteers, and speculators walk away with millions.
... A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace,
one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse,
will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans. A
cabal of protofascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to simpletons
to loudmouth talk-show hosts, will find a following with promises
of revenge and moral renewal. The elites, the ones with their
Harvard Business School degrees and expensive vocabularies, will
retreat into their sheltered enclaves of privilege and comfort.
We will be left bereft, abandoned outside the gates, and at the
mercy of the security state."
Chris Hedges
"Since 2007, well-paying
jobs have become rare and low-paying full-time, part-time and
temporary jobs have replaced them. Companies are cutting back
full-time employment so they don't have to pay for workers' healthcare.
In total, 50% of jobs created over the past three years are "low-paying,"
mostly in retail, food service or temporary help."
David DeGraw, 2014
"99 percent of the U.S.
public, especially young people and minorities of class and color
are considered disposable. At a time when politics is nation-based
and power is global, the rulers of the state no longer care about
the social contract and make no compromises in their ruthless
pursuits of power and profits. The social contract, especially
in the United States, is on life support as social provisions
are cut, pensions are decimated, and the certainty of a once secure
job disappears. The new free-floating global elite are unrestrained
by the old rules of politics and not only refuse to make any political
concessions, they also no longer believe in long-term social investments
and are more than willing to condemn those populations now considered
disposable to a savage form of casino capitalism."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"Using a central bank to
create alternate periods of inflation and deflation, and thus
whipsawing the public for vast profits, had been worked out by
the international bankers to an exact science."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"in the 1970s, as wages
detached from productivity, the rich progressively got richer.
They used their wealth to reduce taxes on capital, role back critical
regulations, break up the unions, install their own lapdog politicians,
push through trade agreements that pitted US workers against low-paid
labor in the developing world, and induce their Central Bank buddies
to keep interest rates locked below the rate of inflation so they
could cream hefty profits off gigantic asset bubbles. Now, 40
years later, they own the whole shooting match, lock, stock and
barrel."
Mike Whitney
"At no period in American
history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility
of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate
consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard
of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality.
Chris Hedges
"Unemployment is much worse
than the 6% that the government reports. The 6% rate does not
include part-time workers who need full-time work, long-term unemployed
people who have not been able to find work for over six months,
and "discouraged workers" who do not consistently look
for work. When you account for those groups, as the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) did until 1994, the real unemployment rate
is currently 23.2%."
David DeGraw, 2014
"The logic seems to be
the familiar old class war, rolling back the clock to the hard-line
tax philosophy of a bygone era - rolling back Social Security
and health care, public pensions, rolling back public spending
on education and other basic needs, and above all, increasing
unemployment to drive down wage levels... A half-century of failed
IMF austerity plans imposed on hapless Third World debtors should
have dispelled forever the idea that the way to prosperity is
via austerity. The ground has been paved for this attitude by
a generation of purging the academic curriculum of knowledge that
there ever was an alternative economic philosophy to that sponsored
by the rentier Counter-Enlightenment. Classical value and price
theory reflected John Locke's labor theory of property: A person's
wealth should be what he or she creates with their own labor and
enterprise, not by insider dealing or special privilege."
economist Michael Hudson
"To think that the scientifically
engineered Crash of '29 was an accident or the result of stupidity
defies all logic. The international bankers who promoted the inflationary
policies and pushed the propaganda which pumped up the stock market
represented too many generations of accumulated expertise to have
blundered into "the great depression."
Gary Allen in his book "None
Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"In the present economy, it
is impossible for 70% of the working age population to earn enough
income to afford basic necessities, without taking on ever-increasing
levels of debt, which they will never be able to pay back because
there are not enough jobs that generate the necessary income to
keep up with the cost of living."
David DeGraw, 2014
"The capitalist dream machine
offers huge profits for the ultra-rich, hedge fund managers, and
major players in the financial service industries. In these new
landscapes of wealth, exclusion, and fraud, the commanding institutions
of a savage and fanatical capitalism promote a winner-take-all
ethos and aggressively undermine the welfare state while waging
a counter revolution against the principles of social citizenship
and democracy."
Henry Giroux
"Western businesses are
less dependent on a prosperous domestic middle class because they
can now sell to the rising middle class of the emerging markets."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2013
"The worse reality becomes,
the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it, and
the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity
breakdowns, gossip, and trivia. These are the debauched revels
of a dying civilization. The most ominous cultural divide lies
between those who chase after manufactured illusions, and those
who are able to puncture the illusion and confront reality. More
than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or
urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture
has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and
antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and
cannot communicate. This is the divide between a literate, marginalized
minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass
culture."
Chris Hedges
"Economic hit men (EHMs)
are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe
out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World
Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and
other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of
huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who
control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent
financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex,
and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has
taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."
John Perkins
IMMISERATION OF THE
MOST VULNERABLE
"The global elite thrives
on war and widespread human misery, on death and destruction by
design."
Prof. Mujahid Kamran
"If necessary, nations
of the Third World must be forced to remain poor if their development
threatens resources on which all life depends."
Michael Soverstein, president of
Environmental Economics
"The biggest problems are
the damn national sectors of these developing countries. These
countries think that they have the right to develop their resources
as they see fit."
Thomas Lovejoy, vice president,
World Wildlife Fund U.S.A., 1984
"If Fritz [Fritz Leutwiler
- chairman, Bank for International Settlements] had his way, he
would kill them all, in the Third World, except a few raw materials
producers, of course."
one of Fritz Leutwiler's fellow
Geneva bankers
"There is a single theme
behind all our work - we must reduce population levels. Either
governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they
will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in
Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population
is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even
fascism, to reduce it.
Our program in El Salvador didn't work. The infrastructure was
not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many people....
To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the
males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers
of fertile age females.
The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like
in Africa, or through disease like the Black Death."
Thomas Ferguson, State Department
Office of Population Affairs, Latin American Desk, February 1981
interview
"The Mexican population
must be reduced by half. Seal the border and watch them scream.
The population will be reduced by the usual means: famine, war,
and pestilence."
William Paddock, State Department
consultant, 1975 interview
"Disregard for the common
good is at the root of all developed-world and developing-world
failed states."
Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
"The current entrenched
powers that be have been in their positions for a very long time
and they have no intention of giving up that role. What the moral
percentage of humanity needs to understand in no uncertain terms
is that these folks and their minions have no conscience. They
could care less how many starve to death, get blown to bits in
war or waste their lives away in front of the television set."
by Michael Krieger
"As in every totalitarian
state, the first victims are the vulnerable, and in the United
States this means poor people of color. In the name of the "war
on drugs" or the necessity of enforcing immigration laws,
those trapped in our urban internal colonies are effectively stripped
of their rights."
Chris Hedges
"While the number of super-rich
is skyrocketing, one million women have died in childbirth due
to lack of basic health care, and 57 million children do not receive
any form of education.
16 billionaires live in Sub-Saharan Africa alongside 358 million
people living in extreme poverty, while inequality in South Africa
is higher than it was at the end of apartheid."
Luke MacGregor
"President Clinton and
other recent White House tenants condemned Haiti to a future of
endemic poverty through a self-serving U.S. rice export policy."
a study of the economic liberalization
strategies imposed by the U.S. on Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s
"In the US's War on Terror,
by far the greatest and most systematic terrorization of civilians
is in fact perpetrated by the US state itself. Unarmed citizens
are murdered across the world as 'collateral damage', 'illegal
enemy combatants' or other license of impunity, but this reality
is taboo to report and so too all the killing and terrorization
of civilians. The historical record demonstrates the US is provably
guilty of continual lawless mass murder of civilians across the
world, but the truth is unthinkable within the ruling ideological
regime."
Professor Mujahid Kamran
"The average British household
contributes £245 a year to the EU's Common Agricultural
Policy - most of which is handed out to the wealthiest landowners.
In 2011 the Duke of Westminster, the UK's richest home-grown billionaire
whose Grosvenor Estate includes the most valuable real estate
in London (in Belgravia and Mayfair), received a sweet ¤1.1
million in EU handouts. The Duke of Devonshire picked up ¤490,000,
the Duke of Buccleuch ¤510,000, the Earl of Plymouth ¤700,000
and the Earl of Moray a cool ¤1 million."
www.blacklistednews.com
"The impact of "development
financing" is often to increase debt rather than to facilitate
development and to enrich multinational corporations rather than
to build domestic industries... Nearly half of all World Bank
financing goes directly to the multinational corporations that
are the real beneficiaries of "foreign aid" and "development
assistance."
... The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began to
tie loans to "structural adjustment" programs, which
channeled more of the debtor country's financial and productive
resources toward debt repayment.
... Structural adjustments were originally imposed on an ad hoc
basis upon individual nations when it appeared that they could
not keep up with existing debt payments. By 1985, fifteen debtor
nations had been subjected to SAPs, and by 1991, a quarter of
the World Bank's total lending was tied to structural adjustment
in 54 nations. As more of the "debtor" nations' dwindling
resources went to debt service, new loans were simply used to
repay previous loans, and the total debt of the low income nations
more than quadrupled from $100 to $473 billion between 1980 and
1992. World Bank and IMF "reforms" continued, and by
the mid-1990s, more than a hundred countries and 80 percent of
the world's population had been "structurally adjusted."
The average developing nation's debt payments were a third of
its gross national product.
... When no more money or exports can be squeezed from the poor,
selling state-owned companies to Northern corporations becomes
an option... Once again, a handful of multinational corporations
are the beneficiaries.
... Structural adjustment proved to be such a useful tool for
leveraging corporate power that it was time to make it a permanent
part of the global economy, and that is just what the international
trade treaties of the 1990s have done-codified the elements of
structural adjustment into international law."
George Draffan
"The situation is much
like what existed in the Middle Ages, with today's poor underclass
much in the position of the peasants, and the super-rich like
the nobility."
www.washingtonsblog.com
"The global elite thrives
on war and widespread human misery, on death and destruction by
design."
Prof. Mujahid Kamran
"In seeking to export our
form of government to Iraq and Afghanistan, we've produced not
two model democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled
respectively by oil and opium?
William J. Astore
"In a world where hundreds
of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking
water and without enough food to feed their families, a small
elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes."
Oxfam's chief executive Mark Goldring
"Billions of euros will
continue to be pried from the half-empty pockets of Europe's austerity-wracked
workers and deposited in the bank accounts of some of the continent's
wealthiest companies and families - not once, as happened with
the bank bailouts, but in perpetuity. In the most perverse of
incentives, the more land the nobility, both of old and new, buy
up, the more money they will receive in welfare checks."
www.blacklistednews.com
"If the world's billionaires
were taxed at just 1.5 percent on their wealth over one billion
dollars, it would raise more than $70 billion a year, enough to
fill the annual gap of funding needed for basic medical care and
education in the poorest countries."
Luke MacGregor
"The 85 richest people
in the world now have the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest.
That was one of the findings of a report from UK-based Oxfam International,
which also concluded that the wealthiest 1% of the global population
owns roughly half of the world's wealth. Inequality is rising
most rapidly in the US, where the richest 1% have benefitted the
most from economic growth since 2009. During that same period,
the poorest 90% in the US became poorer."
Benjamin Dangl
"Political authority and power in America have been
transformed into a savage form of corporate governance and rule.
The United States has moved from a market economy to a market
society in which all vestiges of the public good and social contract
are viewed with disdain and aggressively eliminated."
Henry Giroux
"The international community
is not helping rebuild Haiti. It is improving colonialism in Haiti
with its companies, using the country's population as slave labor
to boost profits. The startling difference between the slow reconstruction
efforts for Haitians as opposed to the rapid rise of the luxury
hotel industry shows that in Haiti, the foreigners come first."
Julie Lévesque
"According to the Census
Bureau, 28% of children are now born into poverty. This marks
a dramatic increase from an already alarming 25% in 2008. In total,
the Census Bureau reports that 22% of children live in poverty.
However, when we make the proper adjustments to the methodology
of the poverty rate, an even more horrifying 45% of children live
in poverty. That means there are currently 33,389,063 US children
living in households that cannot afford basic necessities."
David DeGraw, 2014
"Neoliberalism has created
a U.S. society of ruling brutes for whom pain and suffering are
now viewed as entertainment, warfare a permanent state of existence,
and militarism as the most powerful force shaping masculinity.
Politics has taken an exit from ethics and thus the issue of social
costs is divorced from any form of intervention in the world."
Henry Giroux, 2014
NO JUSTICE FOR THE
HAVE-NOTS
"Americans now live under
a form of casino capitalism and promulgates what might be called
an all-embracing punishing state. Idealism and hope for a better
future has been replaced by a repressive disciplining machine
and a surveillance state that turns every space into a war zone,
criminalizes social problems, and legitimates state violence as
the most important practice for addressing important social issues.
The carceral state and the surveillance state now work together
to trump security over freedom and justice while solidifying the
rule of the financial elite and the reigning financial services
such as banks, investment houses, and hedge funds, all of which
profit from the expanding reach of the punishing state. "
Henry Giroux, 2014
"Since 1980 the United
States has constructed the world's largest prison system, populated
with 2.3 million inmates, 25 percent of the world's prison population.
Police, to keep the system filled with bodies, have had most legal
constraints on their behavior removed. They serve as judge and
jury on the streets of American cities.
The police, who are often little more than predatory, armed gangs
in inner-city neighborhoods, arbitrarily decide who lives, who
dies and who spends years in prison. They rarely fight crime or
protect the citizen. They round up human beings like cattle to
meet arrest quotas, the prerequisite for receiving federal cash
in the "drug war." Because many crimes carry long mandatory
sentences it is easy to intimidate defendants into "pleading
out" on lesser offenses. The arrested are acutely aware they
have no chance - 97 percent of all federal cases and 94 percent
of all state cases are resolved by guilty pleas rather than trials.
The pressure employed by state and federal prosecutors to make
defendants accept guilty pleas - an action that often includes
waiving the right to appeal to a higher court - is "closer
to coercion" than to bargaining. There are always police
informants who, to reduce their own sentences, will tell a court
anything demanded of them by the police.
Chris Hedges, 2014
"The US has a vast gulag
of 2.2 million prisoners in jail and penitentiary. There is an
increasing tendency for prisons to be privatized, and this tendency
is corrupting the system. It is wrong for people to profit from
putting and keeping human beings behind bars. This troubling trend
is made all the more troubling by the move to give extra-long
sentences for minor crimes, to deny parole and to imprison people
for life for three small thefts."
Juan Cole
"The mediaeval turn to
embracing forms of punishment that inflict pain on the psyches
and the bodies of young people, poor minorities, and immigrants,
in particular, is part of a larger immersion of society in public
spectacles of violence. Under the neo-Darwinian ethos of survival
of the fittest, the ultimate form of entertainment becomes the
pain and humiliation of others, especially those considered disposable
and powerless, who are no longer an object of compassion, but
of ridicule and amusement."
Henry Giroux
"The United States, with
less than 5 percent of the global population, has almost 25 percent
of the world's prisoners. One in nine black men between twenty
and thirty-four is behind bars."
Chris Hedges
"Police forces in America
are oppressive organizations controlled by corporate America.
Corporate America is using police forces as their mercenaries.
... The police system is corrupt, police are oppressing not only
the black community, but also the whites."
retired Philadelphia Police Captain,
Ray Lewis
"The police have been turned
into soldiers who view the neighbourhoods in which they operate
as war zones. Outfitted with full riot gear, submachine guns,
armoured vehicles, and other lethal weapons imported from the
battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, their mission is to assume
battle-ready behaviour."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"The bodies of the incarcerated
poor fuel our system of neo-slavery. In prisons across the country,
private corporations profit from captive prison labor. The incarcerated
work eight-hour days for as little as a dollar a day. Phone companies,
food companies, private prisons and a host of other corporations
feed like jackals off those we hold behind bars. And the lack
of employment and the collapse of education and vocational training
in communities across the United States are part of the design.
This design - with its built-in allure from the illegal economy,
the only way for many of the poor to make a living - ensures rates
of recidivism of over 60 percent. There are millions of poor people
for whom this country is little more than a vast penal colony.
Chris Hedges, 2014
"The US has the largest
prison population in the world, not only as a percentage of the
population but also in absolute numbers. America has an absolute
larger number of incarcerated citizens than "authoritarian"
China, a country with four times the US population.
... Today the criminal justice system is largely indifferent to
a defendant's guilt or innocence. This is a far worst problem
than racism. It is the main reason that there are so many false
convictions in the US and so many wrongfully convicted Americans
in prison.
... The primary reason for wrongful conviction is that the success
indicator for police, prosecutor, and judge is conviction, not
justice. Crimes are solved by wrongful convictions. High conviction
rates boost the careers of prosecutors, and high profile convictions
boost their political careers.
... Very few wrongful convictions are mistakes. They are done
willfully, because the overriding incentive of the American criminal
justice system is to produce convictions at all cost.
... In America, police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct
seldom bear any cost.
... State and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors
from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent
people being sent to death row.
In 2011 a Republican Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor cannot
be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case, even if he intentionally
and illegally withheld evidence of innocence.
Criminal actions against the innocent are now the legalized policy
of the American criminal justice system.
... America is a country totally devoid of justice where law exists
solely for the economic benefit of those whose careers rise with
conviction rates, whether of the innocent or the guilty."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2017
"The US has not only a
larger percentage of its citizens in prison than any other country
on earth, but also the largest absolute number of prisoners. The
US actually has more of its citizens in prison than "authoritarian"
China which has a population four times larger than the US. The
US, possibly the greatest human rights abuser in history, is constantly
bringing human rights charges against China. Where are the human
rights charges against Washington?"
Paul Craig Roberts, 2013
"Domestic terrorism now
functions to punish young people whenever they exercise the right
of dissent, protesting peacefully, or just being targeted because
they are minorities of class and color and considered a threat
and in some cases disposable."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"Police arrest some 13
million people a year, 1.6 million of them on drug charges and
half of those on marijuana counts. They take DNA samples from
many whom they arrest to build a nationwide database that includes
both the guilty and the innocent. And they charge each of the
sampled arrestees $50 for DNA processing. They confiscate cash,
cars, homes and other possessions based on allegations of illegal
drug activity and use the proceeds to swell police budgets. They
impose fines in poor neighborhoods for absurd offenses - riding
a bicycle on a sidewalk or not having an ID - to fleece the poor
or, if they cannot pay, toss them into jail. And before deporting
undocumented workers the state levels fines, often in the thousands
of dollars, on those being held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency in order to empty their pockets before they
are shipped out. Prisoners locked in cages often spend decades
attempting to pay off thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of
thousands, in court fines from the paltry $28 a month they earn
in prison jobs; the government, to make sure it gets its money,
automatically deducts a percentage each month from their prison
paychecks. It is a vast extortion racket run against the poor
by the corporate state, which also makes sure that the interest
rates of mortgages, car loans, student loans and credit card loans
are set at predatory levels."
Chris Hedges, 2014
UNAFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE
"YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE"
"The US has the most dysfunctional
healthcare system in the industrial world. It has about twice
the per capita costs and some of the worst outcomes. It's also
the only privatized system."
Noam Chomsky
"The US now has the most
expensive healthcare system in the world."
David DeGraw, 2014
"Health care costs are
a cause of two-thirds of the personal bankruptcies in United States."
Kevin Zeese
"The only way everyone
will get insurance is with national health insurance. People with
catastrophic illness usually lose their jobs and lose their insurance.
They often cannot afford the high premiums for the insurance they
can get when they are unable to work. Most families that file
for bankruptcy because of medical costs had insurance before they
got sick. They either lost the insurance because they lost their
jobs or faced gaps in coverage that meant they could not afford
medical care."
Stephanie Woolhandler, MD
"Our health system costs nearly twice as much as national
programs in countries such as Switzerland. The overhead for traditional
Medicare is 3 percent, and the overhead for the investment-owned
companies is 26.5 percent. A staggering 31 percent of our health-care
expenditures is spent on administrative costs."
Chris Hedges
"The health insurance industry
has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems
are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them. They have
used scare tactics for years to keep that from happening. If there
were a broader public health insurance program like Medicare,
it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies.
So that is their biggest concern."
Wendell Potter
"Despite a lofty reputation
and purported commitment to universal coverage, AMA has fought
almost every major effort at health care reform of the past 70
years."
Sam Stein
"We've got a medical system
in which private for-profit insurers are spending a lot of money
trying to avoid sick people."
Robert Reich, 2009
"In every industrial country
except the United States, the government uses its massive purchasing
power to negotiate drug prices. That's one of the reasons prices
are so much higher in the United States than in other countries.
But, by law, the government is not permitted to do that in the
case of healthcare.
Noam Chomsky
"Health insurers confuse
their customers and dump the sick so they can satisfy their Wall
Street investors. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder
may have omitted a minor illness or a pre-existing condition,
when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification
to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a
premium payment.
...The average family doesn't understand
how Wall Street's dictates determine whether they will be offered
coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they'll be charged
for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top
priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their
stock.
... The health insurance industry and its backers are using
fear tactics to tar a transparent, publicly-accountable health
care option as a government-run system. But what we have today
is a Wall Street-run system.
... Health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping,
they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they
make it nearly impossible to understand-or even to obtain-information
we need... Our health care system is both the most expensive and
one of the most dysfunctional in the world."
Wendell Potter testimony before
the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation,
June 24, 2009
"The for-profit insurance
industry through waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy eats up 31%
of the cost of health care in the United States."
Kevin Zeese
"The health insurance and
hospital industries are highly concentrated, dominated by market
power that allows providers and insurers to overcharge Americans
by 50 to 100 percent more than other nations pay for equal or
better care and universal coverage."
Jon Walker, Firedoglake
"62 percent of all bankruptcies
in the United States are due at least in part to medical illness
or medical bills and that the majority of folks in medical bankruptcy
started that illness with private health insurance."
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler
"Capitalists should never
be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children
hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate
scramble to pay for medical care."
Chris Hedges
"All that stands in the
way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial
complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the
gullibility of voters who believe those lies."
economist Paul Krugman
"They health insurance
companies have been part of the problem in a major way. They've
been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power
to stop a public health insurance option from happening."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 2009
"The health insurance industry
shifted from selling primarily managed care plans, to what they
refer to as consumer-driven plans. And they're really plans that
have very high deductibles, meaning that they're shifting a lot
of the cost off health care from employers and insurers, insurance
companies, to individuals. And a lot of people can't even afford
to make their co-payments when they go get care, as a result of
this."
Wendell Potter, former Cigna senior
executive, 2009
"With government collusion,
health insurance industry created a system of inhumane rationing
that denies insurance to nearly 50 million and hawks fraudulent
coverage to tens of millions more. The failure of the insurance
system leads directly to the most egregious rationing of actual
health care of any industrialized nation. Only in America is a
private system allowed to bankrupt and deny care to millions,
causing tens of thousands to die every year."
Jon Walker, Firedoglake
"Percentage change since
2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies:
+87%
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies:+428%
The percentage American families bankrupted by medical bills that
have health insurance: 7 in 10."
Harper's Index, September 2009
"We force 700,000 Americans
into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France,
the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan:
zero. Germany: zero."
T.R. Reid
"The health insurance industry
wants all the uninsured to have to be enrolled in a private insurance
plan. They see those 50 million uninsured people as 50 million
potential customers. They see this as a way to essentially lock
them into the system, and ensure their profitability in the future...
Behind the scenes, the health insurance industry uses front groups
and third-party advocates and ideological allies. And, those in
Congress who are aligned with them philosophically, to do the
dirty work, to demean and scare people about a government-run
plan, to try to make people not even remember that their Medicare
program, is a government-run plan that has operated very efficiently.
The satisfaction ratings are higher in our Medicare program, a
government-run program, than in private insurance. But the health
insurance industry doesn't want you to know that, and they want
to scare you into thinking that any government-run system is bad."
Wendell Potter
EDUCATION FOR THE
RICH
"In most states, tuition
covers more than half of the costs for colleges. Pretty soon only
the community colleges will be publicly financed under current
tendencies and even they are under attack. The era of affordable
four-year public universities, heavily subsidised by the state,
may be over.
Meanwhile in private universities, costs are going out of sight.
Students often find themselves in a debt trap, which has now passed
a trillion dollars - higher than the total debt in credit cards.
Student debt is exceptionally punishing. Most debt you can get
out of in more or less unpleasant ways, like declaring bankruptcy.
Not in this case. There's no expiration date on the debt. Collectors
can garnish your wages, unemployment benefits and Social Security
for the rest of your life. That's a very effective trap for students."
Noam Chomsky, 2013
"In the current economy
73% of people with student debt will not be able to pay it back
while also maintaining the cost of living, without going deeper
into debt. The US government has sentenced graduates to a lifetime
of ever-increasing debt and ever-declining living standards."
David DeGraw, 2014
"The elite school actively
seeks students who suffer from the appropriate imbalance and then
sets out to exaggerate it. Imagination, creativity, moral balance,
knowledge, common sense, a social view - all these things wither.
Competitiveness, having an ever-ready answer, a talent for manipulating
situations - all these things are encouraged to grow. As a result
amorality also grows; as does extreme aggressively when they are
questioned by outsiders; as does a confusion between the nature
of good versus having a ready answer to all questions. Above all,
what is encouraged is the growth of an undisciplined form of self-interest,
in which winning is what counts."
John Ralston Saul in his book 'Voltaire's
Bastards'
"Harvard is very well endowed.
It has at least $20 or $25 billion. Schools like Yale, Stanford,
and Princeton are not far behind."
Chris Hedges
"The average student loan
debt is now $33,000. Until the Obama administration went Keynesian,
student loan debt was primarily in the private sector. In 2008,
total student loan debt was $620 billion and delinquencies totaled
$50 billion. There are now $1.3 trillion of student loans outstanding,
with the Federal government accounting for $830 billion and guaranteeing
a large portion of the rest. Delinquencies have skyrocketed to
$125 billion, as another taxpayer bailout beckons."
www.washingtonsblog.com, 2014
"Thirty-six private college
presidents were paid more than $1 million in 2012. Median pay
was nearly $400,000.
The highest paid president in 2012 was Shirley Ann Jackson from
New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She made $7.1 million.
RPI specializes in engineering and science and has 5,400 undergrad
students and 1,200 graduate students.
The president of a similarly sized school, Quinnipiac University,
came in second. John Lahey raked in $3.8 million that year, his
25th at the school.
Columbia University's Lee Bollinger made $3.4 million in 2012.
Rounding out the top five are University of Pennsylvania's Amy
Guttman, who got $2.5 million, and Charles Middleton at Roosevelt
University in Chicago who made $1.8 million.
... Meanwhile, average tuition at private colleges was up 4.2%
that year, jumping from $27,883 to $29,056, according to The College
Board. And it's still on the rise. This year, tuition is up 3.7%.
More students are taking on debt to finance their college education.
Forty million Americans now have at least one outstanding student
loan. That's up from 29 million in 2008."
Katie Lobosco
"For everybody who can
afford the price of a Harvard diploma and a pet politician, America
is a very nice place to live; for people not so fortunately situated,
America is fast becoming a brand name pasted on a bad movie or
an empty box."
Lewis H. Lapham
"The student loan industry
is huge - a large majority of students from every type of school
are in debt. Debt is held by 62 percent of students enrolled at
public colleges and universities, 72 percent at private non-profit
schools and 96 percent at private, for-profit schools. It was
announced last summer that total student loan debt, at $830 billion,
now exceeds total US credit card debt... And student loan debt
is growing at the rate of $90 billion a year."
Alan Nasser, CounterPunch, "The
Student Loan Swindle"
"The Bay Area of California
is one of the richest regions on earth. They are destroying the
greatest public education system in the world, systematically.
The major universities are practically being privatized for the
rich, becoming like Ivy League colleges. And educational opportunities
in the rest of the public system are slowly being modified to
provide some kind of technical training."
Noam Chomsky
"Things have become worse
since 2005 when Congress passed a much more onerous bankruptcy
law at the urging of the financial industry. Some types of debt,
such as student loans and taxes, can never be forgiven."
Richard C. Cook
"The explosion in the cost
of a college education is one of the Economic Elite's most devastating
weapons. To have any chance of succeeding in this economy, it
is commonly believed that you must attend the best college possible.
With the rising costs involved, today's students are graduating
with record levels of debt from student loans. At the same time,
the unemployment rate among recent college graduates has risen
higher than the national average, and those who do find work are
making significantly less than they expected to make. This combination
of extreme debt and reduced pay has crippled an entire generation
right from the start and has put them in a vicious cycle of spiraling
debt that they will struggle with for the rest of their lives."
David DeGraw
"It's not possible for
student debtors to escape financial devastation by declaring bankruptcy.
This most fundamental of consumer protections would have been
available to student debtors were it not for legislation explicitly
designed to withhold a whole range of basic protections from student
borrowers. I'm not talking only about bankruptcy protection, but
also truth in lending requirements, statutes of limitations, refinancing
rights and even state usury laws - Congress has rendered all these
protections inapplicable to federally guaranteed student loans.
The same legislation also gave collection agencies hitherto unimaginable
powers, for example to garnish wages, tax returns, Social Security
benefits and disability income.
... Legislators made the suspension of state-issued professional
licenses, termination of public employment and denial of security
clearances legitimate measures to enable collection companies
to wring financial blood from bankrupt student-loan borrowers.
Student loan debt is the most punishable of all forms of debt
- most of those draconian measures are unavailable to credit card
companies."
Alan Nasser, CounterPunch, "The
Student Loan Swindle"
"Legions of self-centered,
spoiled, intellectually limited and wealthy elitists are churned
out by places like Andover, Yale, and Harvard, propelled forward
by money and connections. The real purpose of these richly endowed
schools is to perpetuate their own."
Chris Hedges
CONTROLLING THE PEOPLE
"The United States is moving
into an era unlike any of its predecessors; we were moving toward
a technotronic era that could easily become a dictatorship.
... Our society is now in an information revolution based on amusement
focus, spectacles which provide an opiate for an increasingly
purposeless mass.
... At the same time the capacity to assert social and political
control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon
be possible to assert almost continuous control over every citizen
and to maintain up-to-date files, containing even the most personal
details about health and personal behavior of every citizen in
addition to the more customary data.
These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the
authorities. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who
control information. Our existing institutions will be supplanted
by pre-crisis management institutions, the task of which will
be to identify in advance likely social crises and to develop
programs to cope with them.
This will encourage tendencies through the next several decades
toward a technotronic era, a dictatorship, leaving even less room
for political procedures as we know them. Finally, looking ahead
to the end of the century, the possibility of biochemical mind
control and genetic tickering with man, including beings which
will function like men and reason like them as well, could give
rise to some difficult questions."
National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote in 1970
"The shadow of Orwell's
nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society with its all-embracing
reach of surveillance and repression now works its way through
American politics like a lethal virus. Orwell's dystopia has come
to fruition, reshaping the American body politic."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"The goal of the corporate
state is to create a total control society - one in which the
government is able to track the movements of people in real time
and control who does what, when and where. In exchange, the government
promises to provide security and convenience, the two highly manipulative,
siren-song catchwords of our modern age."
John W. Whitehead
"Police and national intelligence
and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance
against the population and serve as the corporate elite's brutal
enforcers, are omnipotent by intention. They are designed to impart
fear, even terror, to keep the population under control."
Chris Hedges
"The society of experts
will control propaganda and education. It will teach loyalty to
the world government, and make nationalism high treason. The government,
being an oligarchy, will instill submissiveness into the great
bulk of the population It is possible that it may invent ingenious
ways of concealing its own power, leaving the forms of democracy
intact, and allowing the plutocrats or politicians to imagine
that they are cleverly controlling these forms whatever the outward
forms may be, all real power will come to be concentrated in the
hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation."
Bertrand Russell
"What keeps most Americans
from being shocked by the shredding of the Bill of Rights is that
they have yet to feel the consequences, either personally or through
someone close to them. It would appear, however, that they only
have to wait."
William Blum in his book "Rogue
State"
"I cannot say that our
country could have no central police without becoming totalitarian,
but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian
without a centralized national police ... A national police...
will have enough on enough people, even if it does not elect to
prosecute them, so that it will find no opposition to its policies."
Supreme Court justice Robert H.
Jackson 'The Supreme Court in the American System of Government'
(1955)
"The future era involves
the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society
would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.
Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance
over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing
even the most personal information about the citizen. These files
will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote in 1970
"The most outrageous of
the FBI's activities was its COINTELPRO operation, which the Bureau
admitted it had conducted for fifteen years, between 1956 and
1971. Under this program, a secret arm of the United States government,
using taxpayers' funds, harassed American citizens and disrupted
their organizations, using a wide variety of covert techniques."
David Wise
"It's worse than George
Orwell could have imagined in his book "1984" because
fechnological advancements between his time and ours.
The power of government today to control far exceeds what Big
Brother had in Orwell's imagination.
Homeland Security has announced that it is no longer focused on
terrorists, but on domestic extremists - and that's war protesters,
radical enviromentalists and people that disagree with the government."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
"In the U.S., the Federal
Bureau of Investigation that does the secret police dirty work
of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents,
and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues
and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to
Americans' phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence
Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable
individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the
overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that
of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss'
dirty work."
John W. Whitehead
"The Military Commissions
Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the
executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy
combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill
of Rights."
Christopher Ketcham
"One of the characteristics
of tyranny is the monitoring and surveillance of citizens. Done
primarily as a means of control, this has existed in every authoritarian
state, not to mention totalitarian dictatorship, which seeks total
control of the population. The defense is almost always based
on national security grounds."
William F. Pepper in his book "An
Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"
"Anyone who speaks out
against the government's policies could be declared an 'unlawful
enemy combatant' and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American
citizens."
Military Commissions Act, 2006
"The last twenty years
of global "free market" economy have destroyed, through
poverty and social destitution, the lives of millions of people.
Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western
governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites,
have installed a "Big Brother" police state, with a
mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social
dissent."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"When and if a true history
of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of
the American police state but it will also chart the decline of
freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule
of law and held the government accountable for its actions has
steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided,
a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is
a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance
is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than
a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance."
John W. Whitehead
IMMUNITY PASSPORT
NO VACCINATION - NO TRAVEL
"Years ago, "conspiracy
theorists" were ridiculed for warning of a system in which
vaccines would be required to access normal aspects of life. Today,
however, government officials and the mainstream media are openly
discussing the very same system.
For the moment, vaccine passports are mainly intended for international
travel. However, their use can be extended to many other areas
of life. Vaccine passports in the form of free mobile apps in
which a traveler uploads their COVID-19 test results or vaccination
status.
Whatever the "new normal" is for travel will quickly
spill over into everyday life
Researchers suspect these new "passports" will quickly
be extended to employment, education, and even buying food."
Robert Wheeler, Global Research, 2020
"A coalition of big tech
companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport,
with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination
status will be required to travel and get access to basic services.
The group is calling itself the Vaccination Credential Initiative
(VCI), and includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle.
Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can
be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without
phones will have access to a printed version.
The coalition expects standards to be adopted that will see mandatory
negative tests or proof of vaccination, in order to re-engage
in society.
The Commons Project has received funding from the Rockefeller
Foundation."
Steve Watson, snapwire.com, 2021
"The so-called COVID-PASS
Immunity Passport is a smartphone app that will determine who
gets to eat at restaurants versus who still has to get tested
for the coronavirus (COVID-19) and get vaccinated.
If you go along with the New World Order, your COVI-PASS will
give a "green" light to proceed. If you do not, however,
then your COVID-PASS will say "restricted" until you
comply.
Endorsed by Bill Gates and other globalists, COVI-PASS is every
authoritarian's dream come true, and it is coming to a country
near you.
Besides leisure and entertainment activities, COVI-PASS will also
govern who gets to go back to work and who has to stay home and
basically starve.
Those who desire entry into the new world will need to have COVI-PASS
approval, allowing them "safe" re-entry back into their
workplaces.
Residents of the new world will no longer be able to buy, sell,
or do much of anything without a COVI-PASS, which is a dream come
true for eugenicist Bill Gates, who lives not only to vaccinate,
but also to control the human "herd" through technology.
In the end, if you refuse vaccinations and COVI-PASS, you will
not be allowed to work, eat, or participate in society - which
suggests that most people will accept these things just to survive."
thetruthrevolution.net, 2020
"Immunity passports would
require people to present proof of immunity to COVID-19 in order
to access public spaces, work sites, airports, schools, or other
venues.
In many proposed schemes, this proof would be stored in a digital
token on a phone.
Immunity passports would be a significant step toward a system
of national digital identification that can be used to collect
and store our personal information and track our location.
... Advocates of immunity passports visualize a world where we
can't pass through a door to a workplace, school, or restaurant
until the gatekeeper scans our credentials.
This would habituate gatekeepers to demand such status credentials,
and habituate the public to submit to these demands.
This digital system could easily be expanded to check not just
a person's immunity status, but any other bit of personal information
that a gatekeeper might deem relevant.
The system could be adjusted to document not just a person's status,
but also when that person passed through a door that required
proof of such status.
And all data of all such passages could be accumulated into one
database.
This would be a troubling step towards digital national identification,
which would create new ways to digitally monitor our movements
and activities."
EraOfLight, 6/1/2020
UNIVERSAL ID CARD
TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS - PERSONAL,
FINANCIAL, MEDICAL
"The power of government
today to control far exceeds what Big Brother had in Orwell's
imagination.
Homeland Security has announced that it is no longer focused on
terrorists, but on domestic extremists - and that's war protesters,
radical enviromentalists and people that disagree with the government."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
"What keeps most Americans
from being shocked by the shredding of the Bill of Rights is that
they have yet to feel the consequences, either personally or through
someone close to them. It would appear, however, that they only
have to wait."
William Blum in his book "Rogue
State"
"When and if a true history
of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of
the American police state but it will also chart the decline of
freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule
of law and held the government accountable for its actions has
steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided,
a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is
a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance
is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than
a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance."
John W. Whitehead
"National ID cards have
long been advocated as a means to enhance national security, unmask
potential terrorists, and guard against illegal immigrants. They
are in use in many countries around the world including most European
countries, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
... The Clinton administration advocated a "Health Security
Card" in 1993 and assured the public that the card, issued
to every American, would have "full protection for privacy
and confidentiality." Still, the idea was rejected and the
health security card was never created.
... In response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, there has been
renewed interest in the creation of national ID cards. Larry Ellison,
head of California-based software company Oracle Corporation,
called for the development of a national identification system.
He proposed ID cards with embedded digitized thumbprints and photographs
of all legal residents in the U.S.
... The public continues to debate the issue, and there have been
many other proposals for the creation of a national identification
system, some through the standardization of state driver's licenses.
... The U.S. Congress has passed the REAL ID Act of 2005, which
mandates federal requirements for driver's licenses. Critics argue
that it would make driver's licenses into de facto national IDs.
EPIC and others have called for the repeal of this ill-conceived
national identification law."
Electronic Privacy Information
Center (www.epic.org)
"An effective solution
to dissuade illegal immigration would be to issue tamper-proof,
biometric ID cards - using fingerprints or a comparably unique
identifier - to all citizens and legal residents."
www.washingtonpost.com, February
3, 2013
"Creating a biometric national
ID will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every
worker in America will need a government permission slip in order
to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy.
America's broken immigration system needs real, workable reform,
but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms."
Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative
counsel
"Democratic congressional
leaders go to great lengths to say that their immigration reform
proposal is not a national ID card, and make it unlawful for any
person, corporation; organization local, state, or federal law
enforcement officer; local or state government; or any other entity
to require or even ask an individual cardholder to produce their
Social Security card for any purpose other than electronic verification
of employment eligibility and verification of identity for Social
Security Administration purposes.
But it's still a biometric national ID card. ... Essentially,
if you want to participate in the American economy, you need this
card."
Ezra Klein, Washington Post, 2010
"Universal Electronic Card (UEC) is an identity E-card
that is issued to Russian citizens starting from January 2013
and is gradually replacing the Internal Passport of Russia. The
UEC allows remote order, pay and receive government services,
replaces a number of documents, including medical insurance policies
and pension insurance certificate, bringing together different
services on a single card including electronic purse, debit card,
electronic signature, the ticket and other possibilities."
Wikipedia
"Russia will adopt a universal
ID card starting 2012. The Universal Electronic Card (UEC) is
intended to eventually replace all local, regional, and national
forms of ID, providing a central database through which Russians
can access everything from medical insurance to ATMs.
The UEC is designed to push the Russian ID system into the 21st
century. Not only is the card to provide a way for citizens to
easily make electronic purchases, it is supposed to cut down on
fraud. While it doesn't seem to include any biometrics, the card
has other security measures. All information will be stored in
a database, not on the card. The UEC will have a number, a 'passcode',
that points the user to the appropriate record in the database.
For financial transactions users will be able to set predefined
limits so that the card can only withdraw a restricted amount
of funds over a period of time. Each use of the UEC will require
the entry of a personal identification number. Everyone will be
granted a fake PIN as well! If someone is coercing you into using
your UEC, then enter the fake PIN. Authorities will be notified
surreptitiously while the transaction appears to be continuing
regularly.
... Starting in 2012, Russians will be able to carry the UEC and
start connecting it to their bank accounts, credit cards, bus
passes, etc. Due to the legal mandate most of the businesses and
all of the local/regional/national services will be required to
accept it. But Russia's not going to be alone in this. India is
adopting a universal ID for national identity, and is going to
encourage public institutions and commercial enterprises to accept
it. The Indian UID, however, will contain some pretty thorough
biometrics. Programs in Mexico will experiment with iris-based
identification for public and commercial purposes. Universal ID,
especially those with advanced security features, seem to be a
rising trend on the global stage.
... There are some real benefits here. Convenience, certainly.
Many Russians simply don't have a way to make a secure purchase
online, and their public system is a warren of overlapping ID
cards that require an equally tangled bureaucracy. Properly set
up, a UID tied into bank accounts could help you keep track of
purchases and manage finances with greater accuracy.
... With a single ID, agencies will be able to track personal
activity more precisely. That could mean catching terrorists,
but it could also mean a large scale invasion of privacy. The
more often we see universal ID adoption, the more some form of
that technology is going to spread to every industrialized nation
around the world. Government or private issue, service or commercial
orientated, biometrically enhanced or not - UID is on the rise."
Aaron Saenz, January 18, 2011,
www.singularityhub.com
"Electronic money is money
which exists only in banking computer systems and is not held
in any physical form. In the United States, only a small fraction
of the currency in circulation exists in physical form. The need
for physical currency has declined as more and more citizens use
electronic alternatives to physical currency.
In the U.S. many people receive their paychecks through direct
deposit, move money with electronic fund transfers, and spend
money with credit and debit cards. While physical currency still
has advantages in certain situations, its role has gradually diminished.
While it might seem to be a worrying thought that your bank account
balance is nothing but an entry in a computer system, it is really
nothing new. Fiat paper currency has no inherent worth either."
www.investopedia.com
" E-money refers to any
money that is only transferred electronically. Digital currency
providers may make their money selling the e-currency to consumers
or by charging transaction fees to change e-money into actual
currency. Several e-money scripts are eCash, eCache, WebMoney,
Google Checkout and Gogopay. Digital currency can offer more privacy
than debit and credit card transactions.
... Credit cards are consumer loans. The consumer is charged interest
on the amount of debt they charge on the credit card. Credit cards
are legal contracts and can go into collections if not paid.
... Both e-money and credit cards are frequently used in online
purchases. Both online transactions using credit cards and e-money
require the Internet to send money. Both forms of currency can
be used anywhere in the world if the vendor accepts that means
of payment. Both credit card transactions and e-money via digital
currencies require trust between sender and receiver. Both e-money
and credit cards rely on the same advances in encryption to transfer
information digitally.
... Many e-money accounts for digital currencies are initially
funded by the user's credit card.
... E-money when used to transfer legal tender between vendors
or individuals can be exchanged for cash. Digital currencies are
not legal tender, though that currency may be traded with the
local currency. "
www.ehow.com
SURVEILLANCE
INTERNET, CELL PHONES, EMAIL, VIDEO
SURVEILLANCE, DRONES, CORNEAL SCANS, FACIAL RECOGNITION
"There was of course no
way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on
any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that
they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could
plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did
live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every
sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized."
George Orwell, from his novel "1984"
"The NSA specifically targets
the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It
collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes
them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time
simply because that's the easiest, most efficient and most valuable
way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target
someone associated with a foreign government, or someone that
they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting your communications
to do so."
Edward Snowden
"Totalitarian systems accrue
to themselves omnipotent power by first targeting and demonizing
a defenseless minority. Poor African-Americans, like Muslims,
have been stigmatized by elites and the mass media. The state,
promising to combat the "lawlessness" of the demonized
minority, demands that authorities be emancipated from the constraints
of the law. Arguments like this one were used to justify the "war
on drugs" and the "war on terror"."
Chris Hedges, 2014
"In the future, whether
it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace,
getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical
records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that
is your iris. iris. Every person, place, and thing on this planet
will be connected to the iris system."
Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers
"The capacity to assert
social and political control over the individual will vastly increase.
It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous control over
every citizen and to maintain up-to-date files, containing even
the most personal details about health and personal behavior of
every citizen, in addition to the more customary data. These files
will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.
Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information.
Our existing institutions will be supplanted by pre-crisis management
institutions, the task of which will be to identify in advance,
likely social crises and to develop programs to cope with them."
Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book
'Between Ages, America's Role in the Technetronic Era'
"I do not want to live
in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is
not something I am willing to support or live under.
... I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy,
and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
Edward Snowden
"[The National Security
Agency's monitoring capability] at any time could be turned around
on the American people and no American would have any privacy
left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone
conversations, telegrams, it ç doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny,
if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological
capacity that the intelligence community has given the government
could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no
way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine
together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately
it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such
is the capability of this technology... I know the capability
that is there to make tyranny total in America."
Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence
in 1975
"New security technologies
could one day make a digital surveillance state a reality, changing
fundamentally the character of American democracy."
Prof. Alfred W. McCoy
"The shadow of Orwell's
nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society with its all-embracing
reach of surveillance and repression now works its way through
American politics like a lethal virus. Orwell's dystopia has come
to fruition, reshaping the American body politic."
Henry Giroux, 2014
"Police and national intelligence
and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance
against the population and serve as the corporate elite's brutal
enforcers, are omnipotent by intention. They are designed to impart
fear, even terror, to keep the population under control."
Chris Hedges
"One of the characteristics
of tyranny is the monitoring and surveillance of citizens. Done
primarily as a means of control, this has existed in every authoritarian
state, not to mention totalitarian dictatorship, which seeks total
control of the population. The defense is almost always based
on national security grounds."
William F. Pepper in his book "An
Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"
"Even if you're not doing
anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. ...it's getting
to the point where you don't have to have done anything wrong,
you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody,
even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go
back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every
friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on
that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life."
Edward Snowden
"Police and national intelligence
and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance
against the population and serve as the corporate elite's brutal
enforcers, are omnipotent by intention. They are designed to impart
fear, even terror, to keep the population under control. And until
the courts and the legislative bodies give us back our rights
- which they have no intention of doing - things will only get
worse for the poor and the rest of us. We live in a post-constitutional
era."
Chris Hedges
DIGITAL CURRENCY AND
THE CASHLESS SOCIETY
"Currency will ultimately
be digital. Cash will likely be banned to enhance control, and
all payments will be authorized and monitored. Through a new wave
of bank fees and fines, and charges for deposits, average people
will be hurt on all sides of transaction by money that has been
thoroughly debased and manipulated."
Mac Slavo, 2015
"Should a government staff
member suspect an individual of some misconduct, or perhaps deem
that person's politics or speech unacceptable. It would take just
a few keystrokes to order all financial institutions to decline
any withdrawal or payment from that individual or at least freeze
any access to funds."
Graham Vanbergen, 2015
"The central banks are
planning drastic restrictions on cash itself. They see moving
to electronic money will first eliminate the underground economy,
but secondly, they believe it will even prevent a banking crisis...
Physical paper money provides the check against negative interest
rates for if they become too great, people will simply withdraw
their funds and hoard cash. Furthermore, paper currency allows
for bank runs. Eliminate paper currency and what you end up with
is the elimination of the ability to demand to withdraw funds
from a bank."
Martin Armstrong, 2015
"It is not difficult to
imagine what the implications of Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's massive demonetization operation might have in a country
like India, where hundreds of millions live in or near poverty,
with a large rural population, where almost all transactions are
carried out in cash - and where cash is everything for survival.
This is death by financial strangulation.
No blood, No traces - no media coverage. It is a clandestine willful
mass-murder, carried out by the Indian government on its own people,
while instigated by the chief assassins, operating from within
the Washington Beltway.
... This crime was dictated by Washington. A cooperation agreement,
also called an "anti-cash partnership", between the
US development agency USAID, with the Indian Ministry of Finance,
was worked out. One of their declared 'common objectives' was
gradually eliminating the use of cash by replacing it with digital
or virtual money."
Peter Koenig
"If all money becomes digital,
it would be much easier for the government to manipulate our accounts.
...If society becomes cashless, dissenters can't hide cash. All
of their financial holdings would be vulnerable to an attack by
the government.
This would be the ultimate form of control. Because - without
access to money - people couldn't resist, couldn't hide and couldn't
escape".
www.blacklistednews.com, 2015
"The Federal Reserve bank
and its owners, the largest banks on Wall Street, want badly to
be able to charge you interest for the privilege of depositing
your funds. The problem is getting you to stand for it."
Mac Slavo, 2015
"It is deemed by government
officials that cash is used for money laundering and tax evasion.
Cash is bad for society in that respect. Not that the government
has stopped the biggest money launderers and facilitators of tax
evasion in the world - the banks, the very organisations managing
this new system."
Graham Vanbergen, 2015
"Washington's interest
in a cashless society goes far beyond the business interests of
IT, credit card and other financial institutions. More importantly
is the surveillance power that goes with digital payments. As
with electronic communications today - every one of them read,
listened to and spied on throughout the world - some 7 to 10 billion
electronic messages per day - every digital payment and transfer
will be controlled and checked worldwide."
Peter Koenig
MEDIA CONTROL AND
PROPAGANDA
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's
history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and
I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear
in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of
the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar
salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish
as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking
for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in
one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation
would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie
outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon,
and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You
know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent
press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We
are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our
talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property
of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
John Swinton, preeminent New York
journalist, at a press banquet,1880
"The most effective propaganda
is found not in the Sun newspaper (London) or on Fox News - but
beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake
evidence was believed, because it wasn't Fox News; it was the
New York Times.
The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both
of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers
to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers
have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia
- when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work
of the United States, aided by Germany and NATO.
This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington's military
encirclement and intimidation of Russia is not contentious. It's
not even news, but suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign
of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war."
John Pilger
"The long record of the
US state and its oligarch allies destroying societies across the
world is unspeakable in the mass media because they themselves
are financed and advertised in by the same transnational corporations
that demand the resources and territories of societies everywhere."
Professor Mujahid Kamran
"A set of cultural apparatuses
extending from schools and mainstream media to an idiotic celebrity
culture and advertising apparatus, functions primarily to undermine
the ability of individuals to think critically, imagine the unimaginable,
and engage in thoughtful and critical dialogue. Put simply, to
become critically informed citizens of the world."
Henry Giroux
"The major news outlets
are controlled. Reporters understand the rules perfectly. You
do not ever, criticize Israel. The endless wars get minimal coverage
and almost nothing that would upset the public is covered.
... The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal
are quasi-governmental organs, predictably predictable and predictably
dishonest. The truth is not in them.
... You don't need to ban unwelcome books, because the only people
who read them already agree with them. You don't need to kick
in doors at three in the morning to seize forbidden typewriters.
People might revolt against that sort of thing. Just keep prohibited
topics off the networks and out of the papers. It is enough."
Fred Reed, 2014
"How can the public have
a government representing informed consent, if the 'news' media
are constantly, and systematically, lying about the most important
things, and covering up that government's worst, most heinous,
crimes? Yet, this is what Americans have today.
The United States is thus no longer a model for any country except
for a dictatorship. How likely is it that America's press will
let the American public know this now-established fact?"
Eric Zuesse
"The faux journalists being
paid millions by one of the six corporations controlling the media
and dependent upon the government, Wall Street bankers, and mega-corporations
for their advertising revenues regurgitate whatever they are told
by those pulling the purse strings. The mainstream media are nothing
but propaganda peddlers for the Deep State and truth telling is
prohibited in their world of deception, debt, and denial. Their
job is to sustain, enhance, and further enrich the status quo
by engineering consent through what they report and what they
do not report. The true ruling powers who operate in the shadows
behind the scenes are men of power, wealth, status and education
who truly believe they are better equipped to consciously manage
and manipulate the public mind to achieve their ends."
www.washingtonsblog.com
"Had journalists done their
job in 2003, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda
about Iraq's WMD, instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands
of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions
might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni
and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State
might not now exist.
Most of the public in western countries have little idea of the
sheer scale of the crime committed by our governments in Iraq.
Even fewer are aware that, in the 12 years before the invasion,
the US and British governments set in motion a holocaust by denying
the civilian population of Iraq a means to live.
... Denis Halliday, Assistant Secretary General of the United
Nations and the senior UN official in Iraq, resigned rather than
implement policies he described as genocidal. He estimates that
sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis.
... The handmaidens of suppression have done their job well. In
2013, a ComRes poll found that a majority of the British public
believed the casualty toll in Iraq was less than 10,000 - a tiny
fraction of the truth. A trail of blood that goes from Iraq to
London has been scrubbed almost clean."
John Pilger
"Six monolithic corporate
giants control most of what we watch, hear and read every single
day. These giant corporations own television networks, cable channels,
movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music
labels and even many of our favorite websites."
www.theeconomiccollapseblog.com, 2013
"If you wonder how the
world could stumble into world war three - much as it did into
world war one a century ago - all you need to do is look at the
madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media
structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus
black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts
or reason."
Robert Parry
"The major media are not
comfortable with intelligence. Television is worst, the medium
of the illiterate, barely literate, stupid, uneducated, and uninterested.
It cannot afford to air much that might puzzle these classes.
Newspapers can assume that their subscribers can at least read
but, intelligence being pyramidal in distribution, have to focus
of the lower end. They also have to avoid offending the advertisers,
the politically correct, or the corporate ownership.
By contrast, web sites have few of these problems. Since they
aggregate their readership from the whole planet, they do not
have to concern themselves with grocery ads in St. Louis. They
cost little to run. They do not need the bottom end of the distribution.
And they have become multitudinous. Collectively you might call
them "a free press?"."
Fred Reed, 2014
"In 1977, Carl Bernstein,
of Watergate fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and
news executives worked for the CIA. They included journalists
from the New York Times, Time magazine and the TV networks. In
1991, Richard Norton Taylor of the Guardian revealed something
similar in Britain."
John Pilger
"If the British people
really knew the truth, the war (World War I) would be stopped
tomorrow, but of course they don't know and can't know."
British prime minister David Lloyd
George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian
"In the US's War on Terror,
by far the greatest and most systematic terrorization of civilians
is in fact perpetrated by the US state itself. Unarmed citizens
are murdered across the world as 'collateral damage', 'illegal
enemy combatants' or other license of impunity, but this reality
is taboo to report and so too all the killing and terrorization
of civilians. The historical record demonstrates the US is provably
guilty of continual lawless mass murder of civilians across the
world, but the truth is unthinkable within the ruling ideological
regime."
Professor Mujahid Kamran
"Facebook, corporate media
organizations, quasi-government organizations, and the NSA are
creating a corporate totalitarian state where the slaves willingly
sacrifice their privacy, liberty and freedom for mindless entertainment
and distractions. The 21st Century totalitarian state captures
your political beliefs, daily activities, habits, interests, spending
behaviors, organizational associations, love life, pictures, psychological
makeup, and fears from your own postings on the internet. With
the right algorithms they can uncannily predict how you will react
to different situations and messaging. They can also uncover threats
to the status quo. Under the guise of keeping you safe from terrorists
they are actually ferreting out subversives and radicals who refuse
to conform to their idea of a good citizen slave. We will all
be subject to our own Room 101."
www.washingtonsblog.com
"In 2009, the University
of the West of England published the results of a ten-year study
of the BBC's coverage of Venezuela. Of 304 broadcast reports,
only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by
the government of Hugo Chavez. The greatest literacy programme
in human history received barely a passing reference.
In Europe and the United States, millions of readers and viewers
know next to nothing about the remarkable, life-giving changes
implemented in Latin America, many of them inspired by Chavez.
Like the BBC, the reports of the New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Guardian and the rest of the respectable western media
were notoriously in bad faith."
John Pilger
SPORTS AND CELEBRITY
THE GREAT DISTRACTIONS
"One of the functions that
things like professional sports play, in our society and others,
is to offer an area to deflect people's attention from things
that matter, so that the people in power can do what matters without
public interference."
Noam Chomsky
"College and university
administrators defund libraries, close foreign language and classics
departments and invest staggering sums in gargantuan sports arenas
and athletic programs. And the only time the student body protests
or riots is when something unpleasant happens to the beloved football
coach. Pity the student who goes there to learn."
Chris Hedges
"The addiction to sports
in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development of man's moral
nature."
American social scientist Thorstein
Veblen
"Since there is a finite
amount of wealth that can be transferred from the expiring global
middle class, and since everything above that is merely dilution
from excess printing of fiat money, inquiring minds want to know:
is the world financial system due for another massive collapse,
one which will even further accelerate the wealth redistribution,
or is the world's population so zombified that nothing can ever
possibly tips the scales ever again, and the lesson from the French
revolution, when an unprecedented amount of wealth and power was
held by a precious few, have been forever lost on the world and
its citizens?"
from a Citigroup Plutonomy symposium,
2006
"People call in to sports
talk shows and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain
that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into
that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of
complicated detail and enter into far-reaching discussions. These
are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their
intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating
quite a lot of knowledge. On the other hand, when people talk
about international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level
of superficiality that's beyond belief."
Noam Chomsky
"Sports do not build character.
They reveal it."
Heywood Broun
"The professional celebrity,
is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes
a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to
the point where a man who can knock a small, white ball into a
series of holes in the ground with more efficiency and skill than
anyone else thereby gains access to the President of the United
States."
C. Wright Mills
"The fame of celebrities disguises those who possess true
power: corporations and the oligarchic elite... The fantasy of
celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed
to keep us from fighting back.
... Those captivated by the cult of celebrity do not examine voting
records or compare verbal claims with written and published facts
and reports. The reality of their world is whatever the latest
cable news show, political leader, advertiser, or loan officer
says is reality."
Chris Hedges
"Serious sport has nothing
to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness,
disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence.
In other words: it is war minus the shooting."
George Orwell
"In American society our
gods are celebrities. Religious belief and practice are commonly
transferred to the adoration of celebrities. Our culture builds
temples to celebrities the way Romans did for divine emperors,
ancestors, and household gods."
Neal Gabler in 'Life: The Movie:
How Entertainment Conquered Reality'
"For many Americans, war
is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure
and cheer on their side to victory."
Paul Craig Roberts
"Concentration on such
topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the
system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway,
without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that
exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live
in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure
they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but
in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it
has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which
one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie
elsewhere."
Noam Chomsky
"In the world of globalization,
families cooperate, compete, and perhaps even conspire against
and with each other or themselves. They keep the politics of dynastic
power from being understood or contemplated by the masses. We
are distracted with sports, entertainment, 'royal weddings', a
fear of foreigners and terrorism, and are blinded and manipulated
by a deeply embedded propaganda system."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Football, beer, and above
all gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them
in control was not difficult."
George Orwell
"How is it, in the United
States, excellence in sports is celebrated, while excellence in
scholarship is considered elitist?"
Morris Berman
"The triviality of American
popular culture, its emptiness and gossip, accelerates this destruction
of critical thought. Television allows viewers to preoccupy themselves
with context-free information. The homogenized empty chatter on
the airwaves, the banal amusement and clichés, the bizarre
doublespeak endlessly repeated on cable news channels and the
huge spectacles in sports stadiums have replaced America's political
social and moral life, indeed replaced community itself."
Chris Hedges
"Many more people in the
world are concerned about sports than human rights."
political scientist Samuel P Huntington
"Sports plays a societal
role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're
designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators."
Noam Chomsky
POPULATION CONTROL
PRESERVING THE WORLD FOR THE .01%
"Depopulation should be
the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World."
Henry Kissinger
"All children who are born,
beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired
level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by
the death of grown persons.... Therefore, we should facilitate,
instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations
of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too
frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously
encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature
to use.
Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage
contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower,
crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the
plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant
pools, and particularly encourage settlement in all marshy and
unwholesome situations. But above all we should reprobate specific
remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent,
but much mistaken men, who have thought they are doing a service
to mankind by protecting schemes for the total extirpation of
particular disorders."
Thomas Malthus
"The World Health Organization
[WHO]/ United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
[UNICEF] vaccination campaign in Africa is not about eradicating
neonatal tetanus, but is a well-coordinated, forceful, population
control, mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility
regulating vaccine."
obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Wahome
Ngare, Kenyan Catholic Doctors' Association president, published
a letter in the Kenyan press, November 4, 2014
"From its inception, the
Rockefeller Foundation was focused on culling the herd, or systematically
reducing populations of "inferior" breeds.
... The Rockefeller Foundation, working with John D. Rockefeller
Ill's Population Council, the World Bank, the UN Development Program
and the Ford Foundation, and others had been working with the
WHO [World Health Organization] for 20 years to develop an anti-fertility
vaccine using tetanus as well as with other vaccines."
F. William Engdahl
"From the beginning, what
has become the environmentalist movement, has never been about
the environment. The modern day green movement is and has always
been a cover for population reduction."
Executive Intelligence Review
"The diptheria and tetanus
vaccines would function as a social and political mask - to hide
the sterilizing intent, as millions of women in the Third World
would receive vaccines they're told would protect them against
infections and disease."
Jon Rappoport, 2014
"We have been the most
successful species ever; we are now a species out of control.
Population must be stabilized, and rapidly."
Maurice Strong - at the 1992 Earth
Summit Conference in Rio
"There should be a deliberate
quest of poverty ... educed resources consumption ... setting
levels of mortality control.
... The birth rate is unlikely to be lowered by measures designed
to reduce the child death rate by programmes for mass immunization.
... Reduced childhood mortality must no longer be promoted. We
should refrain from advocating public health policies for other
communities ... such desustaining measures as oral rehydration
should not be introduced on the public health scale."
Prof. Maurice King published in
the prestigious British scientific journal The Lancet,
1990
"By 1977, Reimart Ravenholt,
the director of AID's [US Agency for International Development]
population program, was saying that his agency's goal was to sterilize
one-quarter of the world's women."
Alexander Cockburn, 1994
"Spermicides hidden in
GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through
the generosity of the Gates' foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation,
or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are
just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to "reduce
population"."
F William Engdahl, 2010
"When challenged in South
America in the early 1990's about the tetanus vaccine used in
their camping being laced with HCG, the World Health Organization
[WH]O brushed off the claims as unfounded and asked for proof.
When proof was provided by the Catholic based bodies in those
countries, WHO claimed that the other components of the vaccine
production process may have caused false positive results. When
pushed further, they accepted that a few vaccines may have been
contaminated with HCG during the production process. However,
HCG is not a component nor is it used in the production of any
vaccine let alone tetanus! It was only after antibodies against
HCG were demonstrated in the women who were immunized with the
laced tetanus vaccine that the matter was sealed. The immunized
women have suffered multiple abortions and some have remained
sterile."
cryptogon.com, 2014
"Somewhere, in the vast
labyrinth of Gates and Rockefeller-funded alliances of world banks
and health organizations, academic institutions, pharmaceutical
giants and government ministries, civil society organizations,
NGOs and population councils, someone has intentionally kept secret
experimental contraceptives in a medicine [tetenus], pretending
to save innocent babies."
Celeste McGovern, 2014
"If Fritz [Fritz Leutwiler
- chairman, Bank for International Settlements] had his way, he
would kill them all, in the Third World, except a few raw materials
producers, of course."
one of Fritz Leutwiler's fellow
Geneva bankers
The World Health Organization
[WHO] vaccination campaign in Kenya is not about eradicating neonatal
tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass
sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine."
Dr. Muhame Ngare of the Mercy Medical
Centre in Nairobi and spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors
Association, 2014
"There is a single theme
behind all our work - we must reduce population levels. Either
governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they
will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in
Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population
is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even
fascism, to reduce it.
Our program in El Salvador didn't work. The infrastructure was
not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many people....
To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the
males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers
of fertile age females.
The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like
in Africa, or through disease like the Black Death."
Thomas Ferguson, State Department
Office of Population Affairs, Latin American Desk, February 1981
interview
"The present vast overpopulation,
now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered
by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization
and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction
of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means
necessary."
Initiative for the United Nations
ECO-92 Earth Charter
"Bill Gates and Warren
Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs,
as is Ted Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1
billion into various birth reduction programs in the developing
world.
The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy
and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they
involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and
other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile.
The Gates Foundation, where Buffett deposited the bulk of his
wealth two years ago, is also backing introduction of GMO seeds
into Africa under the cloak of the 'Second Green Revolution' in
Africa."
F William Engdahl, 2010
"In order to stabilize
world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It
is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it."
Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
"All the children born,
beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this
level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by
the deaths of grown persons. . . . To act consistently, therefore,
we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring
to impede, the operation of nature in producing this mortality,
and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form
of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction,
which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness
to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns
we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the
houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we
should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly
encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.
But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging
diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have
thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes
for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these
and similar means the annual mortality were increased . . . we
might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty and
yet few be absolutely starved."
Thomas Malthus
"A reasonable estimate
for an industrialized world society at the present North American
material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal
European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible."
United Nations, Global Biodiversity
Assessment
"A total population of
250-300 million people, a 95% decline would be ideal."
Ted Turner, founder of CNN and
major United Nations contributor
"We've got airborne diseases
with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about
that. "You know, the bird flu's good, too. For everyone who
survives, he will have to bury nine."
Dr. Eric Pianka University of Texas
speaking on the topic of reducing the world's population to an
audience on population control.
"A cancer is an uncontrolled
multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled
multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment
of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation
will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions."
Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich,
The Population Bomb
"We have to take away from
humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only
way to guarantee the advancement of mankind."
Francis Crick, The discoverer of
the double-helix structure of DNA
"Malthus has been vindicated;
reality is finally catching up with Malthus. The Third World is
overpopulated, it's an economic mess, and there's no way they
could get out of it with this fast-growing population. Our philosophy
is: back to the village."
Dr. Arne Schiotz, World Wildlife
Fund Director of Conservation
"The idea of using vaccines
to covertly reduce births in the Third World is not new. David
Rockefeller and his Rockefeller Foundation were involved as early
as 1972 in a major project together with WHO and others to perfect
another "new vaccine."
The results of the WHO-Rockefeller project were put into mass
application on human guinea pigs in the early 1990's. The WHO
oversaw massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua,
Mexico and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman
Catholic lay organization, became suspicious of the motives behind
the WHO program and decided to test numerous vials of the vaccine
and found them to contain human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, or hCG.
That was a curious component for a vaccine designed to protect
people against lock-jaw arising from infection with rusty nail
wounds or other contact with certain bacteria found in soil. The
tetanus disease was indeed, also rather rare. It was also curious
because hCG was a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy.
However, when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulated
formation of antibodies against hCG, rendering a woman incapable
of maintaining a pregnancy, a form of concealed abortion."
F William Engdahl, 2010
"Society has no business
to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind."
Theodore Roosevelt
"The world's population
needs to be reduced by 50%."
Dr. Henry Kissinger
"The Planetary Regime might
be given responsibility for determining the optimum population
for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various
countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population
size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the
Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits."
Obama's science czar John P. Holdren:
From Ecoscience
"It is easier to kill a
million people rather than trying to control a million people
people are fighting backour capacity to impose control over humanity
is at an historical low"
Zbignew Brzezinski
"The mainstream media finds
it hard to believe that anyone would deliberately inoculate a
woman against pregnancy without her foreknowledge or consent.
But as someone who has followed abusive population control programs
now for 30 years, and seen repeatedly how such programs violate
the fundamental rights of women, I am no longer surprised. It
has happened before. It will happen again."
Steven Mosher, president of the
Population Research Institute
"The Mexican population
must be reduced by half. Seal the border and watch them scream.
The population will be reduced by the usual means: famine, war,
and pestilence."
William Paddock, State Department
consultant, 1975 interview
"The global agenda of Rockefellers,
Gates, Clintons, Bushes and their very rich loveless friends is
racist. It calls for elimination of non-white populations, genocide.
Their tools of choice include wars everywhere from Afghanistan
to Pakistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine. It includes campaigns
of massive select vaccinations in war-torn countries."
F. William Engdahl, 2015
"In the mid 1990s, the
World Health Organization, in partnership with other international
groups, including UNICEF, rolled out anti-tetanus vaccine campaigns
in developing countries including the Philippines. Women and girls
of child-bearing age only were recruited for multiple tetanus
vaccine injections just months apart - not the usual tetanus vaccine
schedules several years apart - in order to prevent neonatal tetanus.
... Some health workers in the Philippines began to notice that
women were miscarrying after the vaccine and they grew suspicious.
Eventually, the Philippine Medical Association retrieved 47 vials
of the vaccine and had them tested in an FDA-approved laboratory.
Nine of the vials were found to contain the hCG subunit. The WHO
and other global health organizations involved vehemently denied
the claim, but when the PMA sent their lab results in September
1996 they admitted that the hCG anti-fertility drug was there."
Celeste McGovern, 2014
"There are only two possible
ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either
the current birth rates must come down more quickly. Or the current
death rates must go up There is no other way There are many ways
in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war
can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease
are nature's ancient checks on population growth, and neither
one has disappeared from the scene."
Robert McNamara, Oct. 2, 1979
"No woman shall have the
legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood."
Margaret Sanger - founder of Planned
Parenthood - in her proposed "The American Baby Code"
"Every promoted so-called
"pandemic" is an extended sales pitch for vaccines.
And not just a vaccine against the "killer germ" of
the moment. We're talking about a psyop to condition the population
to vaccines in general."
Jon Rappoport, 2014
"The world today has 6.8
billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we
do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive
health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."
Bill Gates at the 2010 TED conference
"Total control of conception
with a variant of the ubiquitous 'pill' via water supplies or
certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a controlled 'antidote',
is already under development."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"The global agenda of Rockefellers,
Gates, Clintons, Bushes and their very rich loveless friends is
racist. It calls for elimination of non-white populations, genocide.
Their tools of choice include wars everywhere from Afghanistan
to Pakistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine. It includes campaigns
of massive select vaccinations in war-torn countries. It includes
setting the CIA and Mossad to the job of creating fake Islamic
"jihadist" terrorists to kill and maim and create the
cover for a Washington "war on terror"."
F. William Engdahl
"The most merciful thing that
a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger, 1922
"We have been the most
successful species ever; we are now a species out of control.
Population must be stabilized, and rapidly."
Maurice Strong - at the 1992 Earth
Summit Conference in Rio
"There should be a deliberate
quest of poverty ... reduced resources and consumption ... setting
levels of mortality control.
... The birth rate is unlikely to be lowered by measures designed
to reduce the child death rate by programmes for mass immunization.
... Reduced childhood mortality must no longer be promoted. We
should refrain from advocating public health policies for other
communities ... Such desustaining measures as oral rehydration
should not be introduced on the public health scale."
Prof. Maurice King, published in
the prestigious British scientific journal The Lancet, 1990
"A part of eugenic politics
would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber.
A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply
because it wastes other people's time to look after them."
George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to
the Eugenics Education Society, 1910
"In nature the hCG hormone
alerts the woman's body that she is pregnant and causes the release
of other hormones to prepare the uterine lining for the implantation
of the fertilized egg. The rapid rise in hCG levels after conception
makes it an excellent marker for confirmation of pregnancy: when
a woman takes a pregnancy test she is not tested for the pregnancy
itself, but for the elevated presence of hCG.
However, when introduced into the body coupled with a tetanus
toxoid carrier, antibodies will be formed not only against tetanus
but also against hCG. In this case the body fails to recognize
hCG as a friend and will produce anti-hCG antibodies. The antibodies
will attack subsequent pregnancies by killing the hCG which naturally
sustains a pregnancy; when a woman has sufficient anti-hCG antibodies
in her system, she is rendered incapable of maintaining a pregnancy."
from the report by The ThinkTwice
Global Vaccine Institute
about the program to vaccinate thousands of women in Mexico, Nicaragua
and the Philippines with a tetanus vaccine containing human chorionic
gonadotropin (hCG) hormone
"The World Health Organization
(WHO) began its "Special Programme" in human reproduction
in 1972, and by 1993 had spent more than $356 million on "reproductive
health" research. It is this "Programme" which
has pioneered the development of the abortificant vaccine. Over
$90 million of this Programme's funds were contributed by Sweden;
Great Britain donated more than $52 million, while Norway, Denmark
and Germany kicked in for $41 million, $27 million, and $12 million,
respectively. The U.S. contributed $5.7 million."
J. A. Miller, 1995
"We should hire three or
four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds,
and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational
approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't
want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro
population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out
that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
Margaret Sanger's December 19,
1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble
"The moment we face it
frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has
a right to put a price on the right to live in it If people are
fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they
are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any
wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber
as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the
excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and
the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility
in modern populations?"
George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces
"The universal requirement
that procreation be limited to the products of artificial insemination
would provide a fully adequate substitute control for population
levels."
from "Report from Iron Mountain"
"In the early 1990's, according
to a report from the Global Vaccine Institute, the WHO oversaw
massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico
and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic
lay organization, became suspicious of the motives behind the
WHO program. When they tested numerous vials of the vaccine they,
like in Kenya today, found they contained the same Human Chorionic
Gonadotrophin, or HCG. They found that to be very curious in a
vaccine designed to protect people against lock-jaw arising from
infection with rusty nail wounds. Tetanus is also rather rare,
so why a mass vaccination campaign and that for only women of
child-bearing age?
HCG is a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. However,
when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulated the
formation of antibodies against HCG, rendering a woman incapable
of maintaining a pregnancy, a form of concealed abortion."
F. William Engdahl
"Eugenics is the most adequate
and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social
problems."
Margaret Sanger "The Eugenic
Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review,
October 1921
"Every promoted so-called
"pandemic" is an extended sales pitch for vaccines.
And not just a vaccine against the "killer germ" of
the moment. We're talking about a psyop to condition the population
to vaccines in general.
There is much available literature on vaccines used for depopulation
experiments. The research is ongoing. Undoubtedly, we only know
a fraction of what is happening behind closed laboratory doors.
Depopulation has several objectives. Along one vector, it is an
elite strategy designed to get rid of large numbers of people,
in key areas of the world, where local revolutions would interfere
with outside corporations staging a complete takeover of fertile
land and rich natural resources."
Jon Rappoport, 2014
"During the era leading
up to World War II, eugenics laws were passed in 27 states which
allowed for the forcible sterilization of tens of thousands of
Americans.
... The Rockefellers funded a eugenics initiative to sterilize
15 million Americans.
... For over a century, they have been one of the largest financial
backers and drivers of the eugenics and the depopulation agenda."
www.blacklistednews.com, 2014
"Population reduction and
genetically engineered crops were clearly part of a broad strategy:
the drastic reduction of the world's population. It was in fact
a sophisticated form of what the Pentagon termed biological warfare,
promulgated under the name of "solving the world hunger problem."
F. William Engdahl in his book
"Seeds of Destuction"
"Our failure to segregate
morons who are increasing and multiplying demonstrates our foolhardy
and extravagant sentimentalism. Philanthropists encourage the
healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the
burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which
brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight
of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate
the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race
and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant
... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of
an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings
who never should have been born at all."
Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization,
1922 - Chapter on "The Cruelty of Charity"
"In 1994, the World Health
Organization was discovered to be vaccinating females aged between
15 and 45 in developing countries with a tetanus vaccine containing
the hCG hormone.
The vaccines were given to thousands of women in Mexico, Nicaragua
and the Philippines. This was discovered after an organization
called Comité Pro Vida de Mexico became suspicious of the
protocols surrounding the vaccines and obtained several vials
for testing.
It was discovered that some of the vials contained human chorionic
gonadotropin (hCG).
When combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, the vaccines cause
a woman's body to produce antibodies against pregnancy, forcing
her body to abort the fetus spontaneously."
www.vactruth.com, 2014
"The Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, as well as the Gates-Buffett led billionaires'
"giving pledge" are keeping in stride with the groundwork
laid and continued by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation.
Heavily funded initiatives to push vaccines, birth control, population
control, Western-oriented "education," GMO and corporate-dominated
agriculture and the like remain some of the most consequential
and troubling policies done in the name of "good" by
tax-free entities wielding enormous, nearly incalculable wealth
and power."
Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
"Global depopulation and
food control became US strategic policy under Henry Kissinger."
F. William Engdahl
"Vaccines containing the
hCG hormone have been used on women of childbearing ages in Kenya
in what can only be described as a deliberate attempt to reduce
the population."
www.vactruth.com, 2014
THRIVING IN THE GLOBAL
KLEPTOCRACY
BE A KLEPTOCRAT
"What is at hand isn't
so much about lofty ideals. It's not about Socialism. It's not
about Capitalism. It's not about Communism. It's not about being
a progressive, a conservative or a liberal. It's not about left
vs right... It's much more fundamental than all of that. Quite
simply, it's about People vs. Power, that's it, nothing more.
Those that have and wield institutional power, and those that
do not.
... Take a good look around, I defy you to point to a single socioeconomic
construct in our supposedly enlightened and advanced society of
today which is not essentially determined by that crude polarizing
characterization. Whether it be our bought and paid for Political
Class, our rapacious Banking Sector, our completely captured Regulators,
our entitled Multinational Corporations, our entrenched Governmental
Agencies, our marauding Military Industrial Complex, our fleecing
Healthcare Providers, our muzzled Free Press, our hijacked Justice
System, or our grossly overpaid CEOs, Athletes, and Entertainers,
they all have one thing in common. What they seek above all else
is to expand existing institutional dominion and their own privileges
within it."
Bruno de Landevoisin, 2014
"Of all the forms of tyranny
the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere
wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy."
Theodore Roosevelt
"The elite rarely confront
genuine differences of opinion. They are not asked to examine
the roles they play in society and the inequities of the structure
that sustains them. They are cultural philistines. The sole basis
for authority is wealth. And within these self-satisfied cocoons
they think of themselves as caring, good people, which they often
are, but only to other members of the elite or, at times, the
few service workers who support their lifestyles. The gross social
injustices that condemn most African Americans to urban poverty
and the working class to a subsistence level of existence, the
imperial bullying that led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
do not touch them. They engage in small, largely meaningless forays
of charity, organized by their clubs or social groups, to give
their lives a thin patina of goodness. They can live their entire
lives in state of total self-delusion and perpetual childhood."
Chris Hedges
"There were 1,600 billionaires
in the world in 2013."
Forbes magazine
"When countries go through
radical economic and political transformations, powerful oligarchies
and gangsters control the vast wealth and resources of the economy
and in turn are able to control large aspects of the state and
the society. Over time they pretend to reign in their overtly
criminal behavior and activities, while institutionalizing their
power in a more technocratic way through forms of social control
which aim to establish consent among the population."
Andrew Gavin Marshall , 2014
"Kleptocrats are not in
it for the country. They are there to line their own pockets.
They want to make as much money for themselves as possible.
Kleptocrats want to get re-elected and if that means they have
to sacrifice the country in the process, well that is the sacrifice
they're willing to make."
venitism.blogspot.com
"Just 22 percent of the
men in the Harvard class of 1970 took jobs in finance and management.
In 1990, 38 percent of the men went into finance and management
- more than the numbers who chose law and medicine combined. Women
shifted their choices even more sharply. Just 12 percent of the
women in the class of 1970 took jobs in finance and management.
Two decades later the number had nearly doubled, up to 23 percent."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2013
"Throughout history, the
best path to becoming a member of any era's dominant elites was
to be the offspring of a member of the preceding generation's
dominant elites... The drive that brings people to the top is
typically matched by a desire to hold on to the position, power,
and possessions that they have acquired, and to pass them on to
chosen successors-typically family members. With this in mind,
elites have most often tried to accumulate the tools of maintaining
power that they feel will be most valuable. These could be armies,
titles, or laws to secure their position and keep others from
seizing it."
David Rothkopf
"20% of all entitlements
(tax credits, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) flows to the top
10%."
"Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
"In the present world of
'globalization' ... dynastic power remains a central institution
in the global system.
... Today, most dynasties do not hold formal or direct political
authority. The world's most economically and politically powerful
countries are no longer governed by kings and queens or emperors.
Instead, modern dynastic power is largely a development that emerged
with the decline in the authority of monarchs, and with the rise
in parliamentary democracy and capitalism.
... As kings and queens handed over the ultimate authority to
issue coin to other institutions, merchants and financiers stepped
in to increase their influence over the new institutions of a
changing world order. Out of these monumental social transformations
came new dynasties, embedded within the financial, industrial
and corporate oligarchies. Their power was not in direct control
of the political apparatus, but in their concentration of control
over the financial, economic and industrial spheres.
... Today, it is the industrial, financial and corporate dynasties
that have risen to unparalleled positions of authority in the
age of globalization."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The global top .01% has
$9.1 trillion in wealth, while the global top 1% has $32.6 trillion
in wealth.
David DeGraw, 2014
"In 2005 18 percent of
the putocrats were in finance. That number has grown sharply in
recent decades, up from 11 percent in 1979. The only occupation
that accounts for a bigger share of the income at the very top
is the CEO class. Moreover, within the generally prospering community
of the 0.1 percent, the incomes of bankers are growing, the fastest
of all."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2013
"Our national wealth has
grown by an astonishing $30 trillion since the recession (2008),
but most of it has gone to people who were already wealthy. We
are living through a massive redistribution of America's net worth
to the beneficiaries of a financial industry that has used cunning
and money and power to impose their version of economic "freedom"
while deregulating any policies that might have stopped the incessant
transfer of wealth."
www.truth-out.org, 2014
"The top 10 percent of
adults worldwide own 85 percent of global wealth, while the bottom
half of the world's population owns barely 1 percent of the total.
Within the top 10 percent, that requires $61,000 in assets to
qualify for entry, a similarly stark stratification occurs. While
this particular "elite" controls 85 percent of global
wealth, the top 2 percent in this group owns half the planet's
wealth, and the top 1 percent possesses around 40 percent. Each
of those in the top 1 percent owns a minimum of $500,000 in assets.
This top 1 percent of global adults represents about 40 million
people. Within this group, however, according to a 2007 report
by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, there are 9.5 million individuals
whose financial assets exceed $1 million.
... Within this group of exceptionally fortunate individuals is
another group - the 1 percent of them, or roughly 95,000, who
each own financial assets in excess of $30 million (these are
the UHNWIs, or Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals), for a total
of $13 trillion. And we know that within this group there is another
approximately 1 percent elite, the world's thousand or so billionaires.
David Rothkopf
"The nation has been hijacked
by oligarchs, corporations, and a narrow, selfish, political,
and economic elite, a small and privileged group that governs,
and often steals, on behalf of moneyed interests. This elite,
in the name of patriotism and democracy, in the name of all the
values that were once part of the American system, has systematically
destroyed our manufacturing sector, looted the treasury, corrupted
our democracy, and trashed the financial system.
Chris Hedges
"The Elites running the
American institutions of governance have become an inbred neofeudal
Aristocracy characterized by a sense of entitlement to the reins
of power and control of the national income. The Aristocracy ruling
the nation has lost all interest or recognition of the common
good."
Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
"Children raised in an
atmosphere of power are educated in its uses in ways that those
who are distant from it cannot he. They are taught tricks and
given catchphrases to use to help maintain the public's goodwill
or cooperation ("noblesse oblige" comes to mind), and
they inherit networks of contacts and often a support system of
staff and/or institutional affiliates who can assist them and
who, as part of the existing establishment, share their desire
to maintain the status quo. It is a natural system and one that
has helped produce and maintain the class structures that have
dominated social hierarchies since the dawn of time."
David Rothkopf
"One hundred people in
India own wealth equivalent to 25% of India's GDP."
Arundhati Roy
"The substantive financial
powers of the world were in the hands of investment bankers (also
called "international" or "merchant" bankers)
who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated
private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation
and national dominance which was more private, more powerful,
and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.
This dominance of investment bankers was based on their control
over the flows of credit and investment funds in their own countries
and throughout the world. They could dominate the financial and
industrial systems of their own countries by their influence over
the flow of current funds through bank loans, the discount rate,
and the re-discounting of commercial debts; they could dominate
governments by their control over current government loans and
the play of the international exchanges. Almost all of this power
was exercised by the personal influence and prestige of men who
had demonstrated their ability in the past to bring off successful
financial coupes to keep their word, to remain cool in a crisis,
and to share their winning opportunities with their associates."
Carroll Quigley, in his book "Tragedy
and Hope"
"In the 1960s the gap between
CEOs and the average worker was 20 to 1. By the 1990s it was nearly
350 to 1."
Les Leopold
"For the rich and powerful,
the family unit has been the principal institution through which
power is accumulated, preserved and propagated, precisely because
the interest is multi-generational, requiring long-term planning
and strategy."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The combined net worth
of the world's richest thousand or so people - the planet's billionaires
- is almost twice that of the poorest 2.5 billion."
David Rothkopf
"CEOs are a very special
sort of superstar: the one who is in charge of the company that
pays his salary. Superstar athletes are paid by the owners of
sports teams, superstar chefs by their diners, and even superstar
hedge fund managers are paid by their investors. But CEOs are
paid by the companies they run. Their compensation, to be sure,
is determined by the board of directors, but, particularly in
the United States, the chairman of the board is often the CEO."
Chrystia Freeland in her book "Plutocrats",
2012
"Millionaires are most united
on corporate tax reform, with 23 percent of Republicans and 25
percent of Democrats saying it should be the most important priority.
Among multimillionaires (those individuals with investable assets
of $5 million or more), corporate tax reform is far and away the
top priority."
Robert Frank, 2014
SERVE THE KLEPTOCRATS
"Being a courtier to power
requires agility and eloquence. The most talented of them should
be credited as persuasive actors. They entertain us. They make
us feel good. They persuade us; they are our friends. They are
the smiley faces of a corporate state that has hijacked the government.
When the corporations make their iron demands, these courtiers
drop to their knees. They placate the telecommunications companies
that want to be protected from lawsuits. They permit oil and gas
companies to rake in obscene profits and keep in place the vast
subsidies of corporate welfare doled out by the state. They allow
our profit-driven health-care system to leave the uninsured and
underinsured to suffer and die without proper care.
We trust courtiers wearing face powder who deceive us in the name
of journalism. We trust courtiers in our political parties who
promise to fight for our interests and then pass bill after bill
to further corporate fraud and abuse."
Chris Hedges
"We have an entire class
of people whose jobs, social prestige, and livelihoods are directly
tied to our foreign policy of global intervention. These people
are naturally inclined to favor militarism and meddling in the
affairs of other nations. This group, while small in numbers,
wields an outsized influence."
Justin Raimondo
"Kleptocracy has clearly
figured out how to extract wealth from the rest of us based solely
on their position and proximity to power. If you have a seat at
the table, you are in for a feast. If you don't have a seat at
the table, you are on the menu."
venitism.blogspot.com
"Oligarchs are assisted
in their control by a "clerisy" class - an amalgam of
academics, media and government employees who play the role that
medieval clergy once played in legitimizing the powerful, and
in implementing their policies while quelling resistance from
the masses. The clerisy isn't as rich as the oligarchs, but it
does pretty well for itself and is compensated in part by status."
demographer Joel Kotkin, 2014
"Look at the writings of
Brzezinski, Kissinger, Samuel P Huntington, and their likes. It
is important to note that members of these elite paid think tanks
publish books as part of a strategy to give respectability to
subsequent illegal, immoral and predatory actions that are to
be taken at the behest of the elite. The views are not necessarily
their own - they are the views of the think tanks. These stooges
formulate and pronounce policies and plans at the behest of their
masters, through bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations,
Bilderberg Group, etc.
... Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger et al, as well as
the neo-con "thinkers," owe their positions and good
living standards to the largesse of the elite. These thinkers
and writers are on the payroll of the elite and work for them."
Prof. Mujahid Kamran
"The specialized dialect
and narrow education of doctors, academics, economists, social
scientists, military officers, investment bankers, and government
bureaucrats keeps each sector locked in its narrow role. The overarching
structure of the corporate state and the idea of the common good
are irrelevant to specialists. They exist to make the system work,
not to examine it."
Chris Hedges
"Technocrats serve the
elite by developing the information systems, formulating the images
and messages deceiving and manipulating the masses and designing
their economic programs."
James Petras
"Every general in the military
hoped to cash out by going to work for a major defense contractor
as soon as he or she retired from active duty. Many feared that
if they took any actions against these contractors (to hold them
accountable for fraud or shoddy work) while still in the military
their post-retirement job prospects would dim."
author James Risen, 2014
"Behind the PR facade of
democracy and free-market capitalism, a parasitic Aristocracy
extracts income and wealth from a financially indentured class
of serfs. This Aristocracy is composed of several Elites which
are served by the Upper Caste of technocrats. These Elites and
the Upper Caste serve each others interests. "
Charles Hugh Smith, 2014
SURVIVING THE GLOBAL
KLEPTOCRACY
INFORM YOURSELF
Over the millennia, as communities
began to organize into societies and ultimately into nations,
elites occupied positions of power. Today, economic globalization
and advances in transportation and communication permit an exclusive
club of plutocrats to rule the earth. They have developed global
networks and institutions that allow them to control the wealth
and resources of their nations, for their own benefit. This revolutionary
change represents a new historical paradigm - a global corporate
and financial super-elite, transcending nations and governments,
whose allegiance is only to themselves and to the members of their
wealthy class. These are the kleptocrats who rule the world.
In the United States and Europe,
as well as in other western-centric nations, financial elites
have undermined their countries' democracies and economies, allowing
corporate and banking institutions to reign supreme, strangling
representative government and the public commons.
A globalized financial and commercial
world has allowed transnational corporations and big banks to
vastly increase their wealth by off-shoring jobs to low-income
countries, trolling the world for profits at the expense of workers
everywhere.
While globalization has been good
for many people in some developing countries who for the first
time have the possibility of leaving their impoverished lives
for a more prosperous future, it is at the same time destroying
the life prospects for millions of middle class families in the
developed world, where well-paying jobs, with benefits and pensions,
have been relegated to the historical "dust bin". For
many in the middle-class, part-time work at low wages and without
benefits is now the norm.
In the West, there is no longer
a facade of "government of, by and for the people".
Corporate profits and market share have replaced the health and
happiness of people and communities as the primary objectives
of democratic governments. Plutocrats now control once vibrant
democracies. The well-being of a wealthy ruling class has become
the paramount objective of government. Politicians are bought
and paid for, and are no longer accountable to the people. They
serve only money and power.
A plutocratic system of rule by
the mega-wealthy is entrenched, with no global actors or movements
on the horizon with the potential to dislodge it. So, global rule
by the rich will persist and become even more oppressive and controlling
in the future. Not a pleasant thought.
As if in a trance, the majority
of people in western democracies continue to be apathetic and
indifferent to the dramatic changes that are occurring, and oblivious
to the impact these changes will have on their lives. People have
been mesmerized by sports, celebrity and personal technology,
while being fed endless streams of propaganda and disinformation
by the mainstream media, that confuse them, leaving them disoriented
and impotent.
Only those who make the effort
to inform themselves about how their world is changing, and who
plan for this new global order, will be prepared for what is to
come.
PUT SOME MONEY IN
A SAFE PLACE
It will be necessary to accumulate
some money and put it in a safe place. But, that "safe place"
may no longer be banks.
Following the global economic crash of 2008, the weakened economies
of some European Union-member states, were further impacted by
revelations of impending bank failures on the Mediterranean island
of Cyprus. The European Union refused to bail-out the Cyprus banks,
but instead forced them to bail themselves out with the savings
of their depositors. This confiscation of the savings of bank
deposits - unheard of before this - was termed a "bail-in"
(as opposed to a "bail-out").
In the future, as Western economies
weaken and decline, and as banks become more fragile and at risk
of collapse, "bail-ins" may become the new "normal".
To insure yourself against future
"bail-ins", it would be prudent to have some money tucked
away outside of bank accounts. Safe-deposit boxes may offer some
protection, but a location totally outside of banks may be a good
idea.
A home safe may be a good option,
or a safe at a business location or with family or friends should
be considered.
GET A PASSPORT
The United States, and most Western
developed countries, have been politically stable for decades.
Most people cannot remember a time in the U.S. when instability
threatened their lives or their livelihoods. But, times are changing.
An overextended U.S. military, foreign adventurism, excessive
financialization of the economy, reckless money-printing, trillions
of dollars of derivative losses, and an almost pathological refusal
to face economic reality, may have positioned Western democracies
at the threshold of an abyss. One more shock - economic, political,
or strategic - could push them over the edge.
As difficult as it is to imagine,
if things in the United States deteriorate fast enough and severely
enough, it may be necessary for you and your family to consider
leaving the country, to start a life elsewhere, at least for a
while. In that case, passports will be needed for each family
member.
Those who have never had a passport
or those whose passports have expired, should get a new passport.
A passport is generally good for ten years, and is needed to fly
anywhere outside the United States.
Most countries require a visa to
enter. Often visas must be applied for weeks or even months ahead
of time, but many countries grant visas at ports-of-entry - airports,
sea ports, and overland crossings. There is always a fee, usually
quite moderate, and passport-type photos are often necessary.
Search the internet for country visa requirements.
A less valuable alternative is
a passport card, a wallet-size travel document that can be used
to re-enter the United States at land border-crossings and sea
ports-of-entry from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. The card
provides a less expensive, smaller, and convenient alternative
to the passport book for those traveling to these destinations
by land or by sea. The passport card, however, cannot be used
for international travel by air.
HAVE SOME MONEY IN
OTHER CURRENCIES
The United States dollar has been
the world's reserve currency since World War II. What this means
is that the dollar can be accepted anywhere, for anything. However,
due to decades of financial machinations, out-of-control money
printing, derivative speculation, and government spending well
beyond the ability to generate income, the U.S. dollar is at risk
of losing its reserve currency status.
Government-to-government transactions
and currency swaps, have been negotiated between Russia, China,
the BRICS countries, and other nations, bypassing the dollar entirely.
This is means trouble for the dollar's reserve currency status.
There may soon come a time when
the dollar will just be one more international currency, and may
not be as widely accepted around the world. In addition, because
of repeated bouts of "quantitative-easing" (money printing),
the dollar may lose its value relative to other currencies.
As a hedge against the loss of
value or status of the dollar, it would be prudent to hold other
currencies. Consider Chinese yuan/renminbi, Singapore dollars,
Swiss francs and currencies from countries that have sustainable
economic policies.
REDUCE YOUR DEBT AND
BECOME AS FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT AS POSSIBLE
Debt should be of concern to most
families. Debt requires a steady income for repayment. Debt demands
forgoing other important needs to satisfy creditors. Debt, whether
for medical care, mortgage payments, college or credit cards,
cannot be ignored. The penalties are too great and too threatening
to your credit rating, your lifestyle, and to your family.
As economic times become more difficult,
as unemployment increases, as jobs become harder to find, as pay
decreases, and as more and more jobs become part-time and without
benefits, your level of debt will continue to have a greater impact
on your family's financial stability, on your employment prospects,
and on your survival.
So, you need to reduce your debt,
forgo some of the things you would not think twice about getting
during good times, pull in your belt, and put some money away
for a rainy day - because rainy days will be coming, maybe sooner
than you imagine.
DISSENT
The political class has decided
that people no longer matter, and that their job is to serve the
plutocrats, and corporate and banking interests.
It may not be enough to try to
protect yourself and your family from the kleptocrats. You may
need to join the fight against corruption, injustice and rapacious
individual and corporate behavior that are the hallmarks of the
present global order.
One way to dissent, is to disengage
from some of the more destructive corporate and political institutions,
and send a message that business as usual is no longer acceptable.
Don't shop at big box stores that
exploit workers, pay less than livable wages and offer no benefits.
Don't eat at restaurants that serve unhealthy food, especially
fast-food franchises. Shop locally. Eat organic for your health
and the health of your family.
Avoid all GMO foods and tell your
markets not to carry them. Protest against Monsanto's genetically-engineered
"frankenfoods" and its herbicides. that are killing
our bees and our butterflies, and may be slowly killing us. GMOs
have been banned in many places around the world.
However, in June 2016, President
Barack Obama signed a bill supported by the food industry that
will prevent states and cities from labeling genetically modified
foods. The standards for GMO labeling will be set at the federal
level, with the USDA in charge of establishing a uniform national
disclosure standard for bioengineered food. The result is sure
to be ineffective GMO labeling, or no labeling at all, leaving
Americans in the dark regarding what is in their food. Americans
will now have to be even more vigilant to avoid GMO foods.
Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide
- Roundup - is causing untold harm to our health. Don't buy it
and tell your friends and family members to avoid using it. And
tell your local nurseries and garden-supply stores not to stock
glyphosate herbicide.
Do your banking at local community
banks and credit unions. Don't put your money in too-big-to-fail
banks, such as Citibank, GoldmanSachs, Bank of America, Chase,
Wells Fargo, and others, that have exploited us, bought-off government
officials and helped destroy our economy. We are hurting our own
communities when we do business with these predatory institutions.
Join public protests against banks
and corporations that exploit us and damage our communities. Let
your representatives in government know that they can either represent
you or the 21st century corporate robber barons. If they won't
support your community, don't support them.
"Support Our Troops"
is a slogan spouted by well-intentioned, but ill-informed people.
In reality, our "troops" are young men and women who
know nothing of the world. They have been convinced - by the media,
by their schools, by their families and by their country - that
by joining the military and going to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen, Ukraine, or other countries they can't find on a map, they
are helping people become free and countries become democracies,
while being true to America's ideals.
But, it is all a lie. The U.S.
is a bully, violating international law, and indiscriminately
causing harm to poor vulnerable people around the world. The wars
that the United States fights are not for democracy and freedom,
but for corporate profit, market share and global hegemony.
The military-industrial-surveillance
complex needs enemies. Without enemies - real or imagined - the
Pentagon, weapons manufacturers, surveillance companies and intelligence
agencies would have nothing to do. So, war - and the threat of
war - becomes a jobs program, and enemies are needed to keep this
bloody enterprise going.
By joining the military, America's
young people unknowingly participate in American aggression. They
terrorize and kill innocent civilians around the world, who don't
want American troops in their countries. They become cannon fodder
for corporate profiteers, and in the process, they lose their
souls, their minds and their lives. That is the truth and the
tragedy of our "just" wars. It
is the job of thinking people to try to stop the abhorrent killing
of poor innocent faraway strangers, and the destruction of the
lives of ten-of-thousands of young Americans.
DO YOUR PART TO END
CORRUPT POLITICS AND PREDATORY CAPITALISM
The plutocrats have done everything
in their power to corrupt government and to make it serve them.
The U.S. Supreme Court's "Citizen United" decision said
that corporations - artificial entities that do not breath air
and do not die, and that have almost unlimited wealth - have as
much right to influence our elected representatives as the people
do. But, that's not what the Declaration of Independence and Constitution
say.
Corporations and wealthy individuals
are smothering our country's founding documents. In a society
in which money rules, plutocrats are turning democracy into kleptocracy.
Government officials are bribed while in office, and then seamlessly
move from "public service" to the private sector, selling
themselves to the highest bidder. If it continues, democracy will
be dead, everywhere.
It may finally be time to consider
alternatives to the current pathologic economic and political
order. If the global elite are a predatory class that has respect
for neither human beings nor the richness and diversity of the
earth, and whose sole goal is too exploit the earth and its resources
until they are exhausted, then the result will be the gradual
destruction of all that is beautiful and worthwhile - the destruction
of life itself.
There are individuals and organizations
- not yet full-fledged movements - that are working on alternatives
to predatory capitalism and the hierarchical political order that
thrives on it. These visionaries recognize that our current path
is leading to the immiseration of the vast majority of people,
and ultimately, the destruction of life as we know it. And, they
understand that if they do not act, and if others do not join
them, there will be no hope.
We need to inform ourselves about
the early efforts being made by diverse groups toward developing
alternative economic and political systems. And, we need to work
with others, toward a more humane and sustainable world.
PREPARE FOR A
PLUTOCRAT-CONTROLLED NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC ORDER
AND GLOBAL AUTHORITARIANISM
Things are moving rapidly. Inequality
in America is extreme. Authoritarianism is increasing. Before
we realize it, America's democratic experiment will have ended
in failure, and possibly chaos. Societies with extreme inequality
have always come to ignoble ends. The question is whether America
will end with a whimper, or with a bang.
American hubris has resulted in
global economic chaos and strategic confrontation. We are no longer
the only superpower. Both Russia and China, once great empires,
want a second chance at global prosperity and respect. As the
U.S. is forced by circumstances to abandon its role as the sole
global policeman and economic powerhouse, others are ready to
take its place. But, dying empires are known to flail about and
fight viciously to preserve their former hegemony. And, it looks
like the United States will not go quietly into the night.
U. S. power was at its peak following
World War II. America ruled the globe economically and militarily.
It's influence was ubiquitous and its soft power seemingly unlimited.
But, arrogance and greed have turned the United States into a
pariah. We are feared for our power, but no longer respected for
our institutions. Inequality, injustice, corruption, and our projection
of violence, have turned much of the world against us.
Throughout the 20th century and
into the 21st century, while the United States rhetorically lauded
the benefits of democracy, it undermined democratically-elected
governments everywhere. U.S.-sponsored coups and "color revolutions"
dressed-up as spontaneous popular uprisings, have shown that democratic
governments are not well-suited to withstand 21st century 'realpolitik'.
Developing countries, which once
looked to the United States as a model for political and economic
development, are re-evaluating whether democracy is their best
political choice. As the economic and political might of Russia
and China grow, so does their influence. And, as the United States
repeatedly demonstrates how easily it can manipulate elections
and exploit popular unrest, while hypocritically preaching about
democracy, developing countries may conclude that authoritarian
government may be their best survival option.
The result: democracy will be left
in the dustbin of history.
On the economic front, a new feudalism
is emerging. As work is made contingent and part-time, employee
benefits are cut, operations are moved offshore, unemployment
increases, well-paying manufacturing jobs become minimum-wage
service jobs, family debt grows, inequality increases and opportunities
disappear, the United States is beginning to look more like a
mal-developed country in the global South, than an economic giant,
while American workers, once the envy of the world, struggle to
compete with workers in the third world.
21st century neoliberal capitalism
is producing chaos, globally. Unabashed greed, absence of effective
regulation of business activity, and the growth of global casino
capitalism have caused untold damage. Austerity, privatization,
extreme financial risk-taking, endemic fraud and market manipulation
have combined to produce a perfect economic storm. Regulators
have stopped regulating, plutocrats continue to accumulate wealth,
and politicians grab what they can. Nobody trusts anybody, banks
won't lend, unemployment is high and rising, personal debt is
staggering, and hardship and immiseration are growing, while the
.01% spends with abandon and economic inequality has achieved
heights not seen since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.
Business and political elites have
shown a willingness to undermine and severely damage their own
country's economy, in order to weaken a populist government that
refuses to support neoliberal economic policies that enrich the
wealthy. As the economy is covertly sabotaged, the population,
unaware that the source of their misery is the business elite,
blame the populist leaders, and remove them from office. The result
is that neoliberal governments replace populist governments, anti-worker
policies are adopted and accelerated, the elites grow richer,
and the working class suffers even more.
In Asia, China's growing economic
power is transforming global finance. The Chinese yuan may soon
take its place as an international reserve currency, joining the
dollar - or even replacing it. The global impact of the dollar's
reserve currency displacement would be enormous.
Banks have started restricting
cash withdrawals. It is now difficult to take out more than a
few thousand dollars in cash from some banks. Soon it may be nearly
impossible to withdraw cash from bank accounts.
Some countries are considering
becoming cashless societies, where money will no longer be accepted
and all monetary transactions will be digital. The result will
be the end of financial privacy. Governments will then have total
control over the economic lives of their citizens.
In the new "normal" financial
environment, banks will prosper by taxing the deposits of savers
(rather than paying interest on deposits) or by taking some of
the savings of their customers (bail-ins) as needed to enhance
their balance sheets.
As the economic noose tightens,
political turmoil, popular unrest and even global conflict may
result.
Kleptocratic elites in concert
with corrupt political and business leaders, will not be the solution
to the probem - they will be the problem.
Every person will have to fend
for himself or herself, and for their loved ones, in a more chaotic,
less fair, less democratic, more authoritarian world.
The time to prepare is now.
