What to Do When Corporations Rule the World

An interview with David C. Korten by Sarah Ruth van Gelder

A few jaws dropped among the young activists at a training camp outside Seattle where preparations for the WTO blockade were in high gear. The man who had just joined the circle looked like he might be on his way to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

But the young activists soon learned that David Korten is a leading critic of corporate globalization. Many credit him with opening their eyes to the threat to democracy, the environment, community, and our common future posed by transnational corporations, global finance institutions, and the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and IMF.

David Korten didn’t always hold these views. He was raised in a small town in Washington state where it was assumed that he would take over the family business. In college he was a Young Republican, and it was his concern about the threat of communism that led to his decision to help bring the US business model to impoverished countries. He helped start a business school in Ethiopia and was a Harvard Business School advisor to the Central American Management Institute in Nicaragua. He later worked for the US Agency for International Development and the Ford Foundation in Asia.

Gradually, he found that the US development model was benefitting US corporations, not those it purported to serve. In 1992, he returned to the US to explore the roles of corporations, financial markets, the IMF, World Bank, and other global institutions. This exploration took form in his book When Corporations Rule the World, published by Berrett-Koehler and Kumarian Press in 1995.

I have been privileged to be a colleague of David’s for some years. He is founding board chair of the Positive Futures Network, publisher of YES! He’s a regular contributor to YES! and an important source of insights and ideas. I spoke to David about the upcoming release of the second edition of When Corporations Rule the World.— Sarah Ruth van Gelder

Sarah: When the first edition of When Corporations Rule the World came out, you were one of very few voices questioning the global power of corporations and international finance institutions. That was in 1995. Now it’s 2001, the second edition is coming out, and things are radically different. What has happened in those six years?

David: Corporate power has become even more concentrated and rapacious. We see ever larger mergers, with particularly ominous consolidation in banking, media, and agribusiness. Even when the economy was at its most robust, downsizing continued as a favored corporate strategy for getting a quick boost in share price. Inequality is worse. Environmental failure is accelerating. Ever more of the commons is being privatized. Corporations are playing God with genes for profit. And the financial system has become even more rapacious and unstable.

The new edition of When Corporations Rule the World updates developments in all these areas.
On the positive side, teach-ins, seminars, books, and articles in independent publications like YES! have increased public awareness and mobilized citizen action. World attention was briefly focused on the 50,000 people who took to the streets of Seattle on November 30, 1999, to protest the World Trade Organization. Less noted was the fact that on that same day, as many as a million people joined in demonstrations around the world. Indeed, citizen outrage has become so great that corporate elites and their captive public representatives are being forced to seek out ever more isolated and heavily fortified venues for their meetings.

Some 60,000 people turned out for the recent heads of state meeting in Quebec City, which was walled off with checkpoints, a chain-link fence set in concrete blocks, and 6,000 heavily armed police. The air was so heavy with tear gas that it hung in clouds over the city and was sucked into the meeting rooms through the air conditioning. The next meeting of the World Trade Organization will be held in Qatar, a remote monarchy with a reputation for ruthless political suppression.

The breadth of the growing citizen concern was documented in a Business Week poll, which found that 73 percent of adult Americans think corporations have too much power.

The new edition of When Corporations Rule the World documents the growing citizen concern and the opportunities it creates for deep change. Much as with the seemingly sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union and fall of Apartheid in South Africa, we are experiencing a largely invisible buildup of social tension similar to the pressure that builds in the Earth’s tectonic plates before an earthquake.

Sarah: The coalitions that are opposing globalization involve people ranging from Canadian farmers to Asian NGOs, to European environmental groups, to US steelworkers. Are these short-term, fragile coalitions, or is there something deeper that holds these groups together?

David: These alliances are built on a deep foundation. Though the various groups involved in the protests speak with many voices, they are joined by a deep commitment to life and democracy. In India, it’s known as the Living Democracy Movement, which is beautifully descriptive of the values the movement embraces.

Although sometimes characterized by the corporate press as isolationist, it is perhaps the most truly international and inclusive social movement in human history. There is a strong sense of international solidarity and a deep commitment to international cooperation. This is the positive face of globalization — the globalization of civil society. It is a collective human response to the threat posed to the rights and well-being of people everywhere by the globalization of undemocratic institutions.

More specifically, global financial markets and global corporations are programmed to destroy life — the lives of working people, the life of community, and the living wealth of the planet — to make money for the already wealthy. And they do it with extraordinary efficiency. The threat will not be resolved until the publicly traded, limited liability corporation is effectively eliminated as an organizational form. By that time, the new global consciousness will be so deeply embedded in the human consciousness as to be irreversible.

Let me elaborate. Recall that our contemporary global corporations are direct descendants of the British East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. The institutional form of the publicly traded, limited liability corporation was created to make possible the nearly unlimited aggregation of economic power under a centralized command authority for the purpose of colonizing and extracting the wealth of others without regard to human or natural consequences. Today, corporations, which command more economic resources than most states, are using their power to claim ownership rights to yet more of the productive assets of society and planet, including water, soils, air, knowledge, genetic material, communications.

Here is where we see the link between corporate globalization and the commons. Corporations are pushing hard to establish property rights over ever more of the commons for their own exclusive ends, often claiming the right to pollute or destroy the regenerative systems of the Earth for quick gain, shrinking the resource base available for ordinary people to use in their pursuit of livelihoods, and limiting the prospects of future generations.

The system is brilliantly designed to strip away any human sensibility from decisions that have profound human consequences. Even if the top manager of a corporation has a deep social and environmental commitment, he (it’s usually a “he”) is legally bound to act on this commitment only to the extent that it is consistent with maximizing returns to shareholders.

Sarah: When the question of corporate rule comes up, some people get very uneasy that those who work in or lead corporations are being demonized. A lot of people are looking for approaches that are inclusive and don’t divide us. How do you respond to that concern?

David: Unfortunately, we live in a deeply divided society; living in denial of that fact will not make the divisions go away. On the other hand, it is no more helpful to demonize the rich than it is to demonize the poor. My own focus is on the structural causes of the division, which is why I focus on the nature of the corporation as an institution and on the ways its legal structure directs the behavior of those who work for it.

One thing that is important to understand about me is that, although I’m often referred to as an economist, my professional training is actually in psychology and in the behavior of organizations. In business school, I was trained to design organizational structures, including corporations, to shape human behavior through the design of reward and punishment systems.

The clearest example is CEO compensation. According to the latest Business Week survey, the head of a major corporation now receives an average compensation package of more than $13 million a year, most of it in stock options. The actual value of the options depends on the growth of the stock price, which provides a powerful incentive for the CEO to keep his attention focused exclusively on maximizing short-term return to shareholders.

Now consider that the CEO of a major corporation sits at the top of an authoritarian organizational structure that gives him command authority over economic resources greater than those of most countries. The law, the financial incentives of his compensation package, and his board of directors all tell him that this power is to be used exclusively to increase shareholder return. Add to this the fact that the legal structure of publicly traded corporations disconnects the rights and powers of ownership from the consequences of their use by institutionalizing an extreme form of absentee ownership; owners are kept unaware of the actions taken in their name for their exclusive benefit and shielded from any liability for the consequences of those actions.

Put this together and you begin to realize that the publicly traded, limited liability corporation is designed to encourage and facilitate the abuse of power for the exclusive benefit of a privileged elite. It is an institutional form programmed by its legal structure to behave like a sociopath irrespective of the ethical sensibilities of the employees who serve it — including those of the CEO.

One can, with justification, argue that those who sit atop the system as money managers and corporate CEOs use the system to their own advantage. Yet in many respects you might think of them as well-compensated employees of a system that serves its own ends without regard to human interests. I see little point in demonizing the servant for the sins of a master that has neither soul nor conscience. The goal must be to transform the demon master into faithful servant by changing the rules that define it. Limit its size, strip it of its special rights and privileges, and vest its ownership in the employees, community members, customers, and suppliers it properly serves. I see little hope that leadership for such change will come from the ranks of the system’s power holders.

I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to be CEO of a $100-billion corporation with operations in more countries than I can name, producing and selling thousands of products and services about which I have little knowledge, facing incessant demands from shareholders to get the stock price up 10 percent by the end of the quarter. Like finding oneself astride a Brahma bull in a rodeo, it surely focuses the attention, but probably not on large questions of ethical purpose and the nature of society. This is one reason I believe change is more likely to come from outside the system, from people who have the freedom and distance to be more reflective.

Sarah: What problems would not be solved if we were able to deal with the issues of corporate rule?

David: This is a key question, because simply sweeping away global corporations to reclaim the spaces they have colonized would only remove a barrier to the creation of just, sustainable, and compassionate societies. There would remain a daunting task of restoring damaged ecosystems and communities and redistributing the recovered assets in ways that assure their sustainable use.

It would also be necessary to rebuild the capacity of households and communities to steward and manage the space reclaimed. We’d have to learn to make choices between appropriate and inappropriate technologies, and to relate to one another and to the Earth in more equitable, sustainable, and democratic ways. Many of us have become so conditioned to being dependent on hierarchical organizations that we would have to relearn how to take responsibility and be active participants in our communities and businesses. Learned dependence is, for example, a major barrier to effective employee ownership.

Sarah: Some have said that your approach is utopian — that because of travel, the widespread use of communications technologies, people’s love of cultural differences, the economic theory of comparative advantage, globalization is inevitable.

David: Those of us who oppose corporate rule made a serious tactical mistake in
allowing ourselves to be characterized as an “anti-globalization” movement. We failed to realize that to most people the term globalization refers to increasing international exchange, communication, and awareness of the planet as a whole; trends that probably are inevitable and that most of the protestors strongly favor.

Many of us are now using more precise language to make clear that our opposition is to corporate globalization, that is the corporate domination of the planet, the use of trade agreements to strengthen corporate rights and to remove constraints to their pillage of the Earth. This type of globalization is an artificial product of rules made through undemocratic and illegitimate processes by people seeking to free themselves from democratic accountability for their actions. We don’t have to accept it.

So the question becomes, “Is democracy a utopian ideal in a world of corporate rule?” I’m sure that in an earlier day, many considered those who called for the end of monarchy in favor of democracy to be utopians.

If democracy is a politically infeasible goal in our present context, then we might well conclude that human survival is also politically infeasible, since corporate rule is leading us toward our own self-destruction. So should we just throw up our hands and say we are doomed? Or should we get on with figuring out how to make the politically infeasible feasible?

I see it as a test of how we would answer the question, “Is there intelligent life on Earth?” If we are in fact an intelligent species, then we ought to be able to look ahead, see where we’re headed, realize it is not where any sane person should want to go, and make the choices necessary to move in a different direction.

There are also basic questions about human nature. Modernism has cultivated a widespread belief that humans are by nature greedy, individualistic, and aggressive, and that progress depends on a competitive process by which the strong displace and destroy the weak. Conversely, this belief system suggests that cooperation is not in our nature and if it were, it would be a barrier to progress.

Fortunately, we don’t have to look very hard to realize that compassion, cooperation, even love, are the foundation of most human relationships and indeed, are an essential underpinning of civilization. It seems self-evident, therefore, that these capacities are at least as inherent in our nature as is our well-demonstrated capacity for greed, violence, and destruction. It is a matter of which capacities we choose to nurture in ourselves, our children, and the larger society.

I’m especially excited by the new biology’s findings that mature living systems are based on mutuality and cooperation. We see in living systems an incredible capacity for cooperative self-organization toward relationships that maintain a delicate balance between individual and collective needs. If this capacity for mutuality is a universal characteristic of healthy living systems, which it seems to be, then surely we humans have a similar potential, even though modern societies seem intent on denying it. Such insights from the frontiers of the biological sciences may profoundly reshape our image of ourselves and allow us to move beyond our dependence on coercive hierarchical forms of organization to maintain social order.

Sarah: Where do you see the most promising work happening in moving us toward the kind of just, compassionate, sustainable society we’ve been talking about?

David: In terms of the business sector I think of groups working on socially responsible investment and the Social Ventures Network, which brings together business leaders like Ben Cohen, Anita Roddick, and Judy Wicks who are fire-in-the-belly activists working to create enterprises that explore the possibilities of what business can contribute to creating a better society.

To me, the greatest source of hope for the human future is the evidence that millions of people are awakening to a new cultural consciousness. For the United States, they trace this new consciousness back to the civil rights movement, when many awoke to the fact that relations between the races were defined by a cultural code that had nothing to do with reality. There soon followed a realization that relations between men and women, people and the environment, straights and gays, and now people and corporations have also been defined by cultural codes that are similarly at odds with reality. This trend is freeing us to rethink human values and relationships in ways that may lead to the realization of previously unrecognized potentials in ourselves and society.

The trend has important implications, as it suggests that political success must be built on the foundation of an awakened cultural consciousness. The most potent political actions will be those that facilitate the awakening, while coalescing and aligning the social energies released toward the task of building a world that works for all. A new politics will naturally flow.

It is within our means to make a collective choice for life, though time is fast running out. I sometimes feel torn. We must wake people up to the unacceptable consequences of accepting the status quo. Yet fear alone can cause us to draw inward and focus on purely defensive strategies that are ultimately self-defeating. The energy for the creative task at hand must flow from a deep love of life and compassion that leads us to reach out to all our neighbors in a joyful anticipation of the world that is ours to
create together. http://theunjustmedia.com/Corporation/What%20to%20Do%20When%20Corporations%20Rule%20the%20World.htm

Under the Gun: Just Defy

• Posted on May 28, 2014
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

UNDER THE GUN:
JUST DEFY

I get a lot of books to review at the office and as I was taking inventory of them today I found a book hidden in all of the others that caught my eye. The book was all about government secrets and malfeasance that actually confirm some of the most enduring conspiracy theories.
The book was written by one of my favorite authors and contributors to Ground Zero, Nick Redfern. I am certain that we will have him on to comment about the book, but there was a segment in the introduction that I wanted to share because of what I have been thinking about today while preparing my radio show.
The segment in Redfern’s book, which is called “For Nobody’s Eyes Only,” opens with commentary on Mahatma Gandhi, the passive revolutionary that defied the United Kingdom and helped India gain its independence.
Gandhi made a wise statement when he said “A small body of determined spirits fired by unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
This stood out from all of the words on the page because they ring so true today as they did when he was alive. When people have an unswerving desire for something and they put the faith and minds to it they can achieve just about anything that they desire.
However, if there is doubt and anxiety or if we decide the goal is not worth the struggle, we will begin to see things that we hold important slip through our fingers.
It is unbelievable to state the fact that there is a war going on that was declared without fanfare. The war I speak of was declared on you and me by another body of determined spirits that also have an unquenchable faith in their mission. They have been wielding their power for some time and it may also surprise you to know that they are a very small group compared to the totality of those they wish to control.
The characters in this small group have been outed many times attending the secret Bilderberg meetings and the ritualistic “Cremation of Care” ceremony at the Bohemian Club in California. They have been secreted away and hide behind presidents and other rulers determining policy, answering to banks, beholden to secret agendas and have burned, shredded, and buried away their paper trails.
They have proposed through back channels the increased spending for the increasing encroachment of the world wide police state and the leviathan growth of the intelligence apparatus and the military industrial complex.
This growth has also been responsible to militarizing local police forces and creating a panopticon surveillance state. You may not know it, you may not even feel it, but you can read about it every day from the headlines to the funny pages that the United States has become a prison and this has been done with the cooperation of the executive and judiciary branches of government.
The act of “enforcement” seems to now be the battle cry for this nation and as we continue to be a military police unit for the European Union and NATO the prophetic words of Henry Kissinger seem to mean more now not only because he is probably one of the heads of the shadow government but because we are beginning to see the passivity of American citizens towards the ever encroaching jackboot of the new world.
At the 1991 Bilderberg Conference at Evian, France, Kissinger allegedly remarked that:
“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”
Today Barack Obama spoke to the graduating class at West Point, once again confirming that the military – not the people – are the backbone of America’s leadership. Hidden in his words to the Military graduates was something that was chilling and set the dialogue in motion for the progression of what we would call a “new dictatorship” that will be formed in America. It may not be Obama’s dictatorship, but it will be his legacy.
The dictatorship that we are blaming on Obama began years before we even knew who he was and the attitude that we have the power to create the ‘new empire’ based on an agreement an pact that we make with the United Nations.
Any treaty that would be signed by our president enabling the United Nations would completely shut down the constitutional bond we have with our sovereignty and independence.
The plan that I see being hinted at in the Bilderberg meetings is that it is time for America to become a rogue state for the benefit of the newly proposed empire.
This is a dangerous move; however, it’s a move that seems to be more and more obvious because it goes on without question. Human rights in the United States will suffer while the President will remind the citizens of their exceptionalism and their obligation to obey and become servitors of the new order. This will all be put together with those nationalist words of “freedom” and more “freedom.”
As Barack Obama stated in his West Point speech, we are no longer the sovereign fighting for the survival of the citizens of the United States and its values, we are now the globalist police force that is now technologically capable of enforcing and promulgating the New World Order:
“But the world is changing with accelerating speed. This presents opportunity, but also new dangers. We know all too well, after 9/11, just how technology and globalization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm…
It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world. The question we face, the question each of you will face, is not whether America will lead but how we will lead, not just to secure our peace and prosperity but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.”
Can this be any clearer as to what our future will hold? We are to become a rogue military fortress that will be charged with the duties of the enforcing the new constitution or new statements of privilege provided by a world government.
“On the other hand, when issues of global concern that do not pose a direct threat to the United States are at stake – when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction – then the threshold for military action must be higher,” he continued. “In such circumstances, we should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action. We must broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development; sanctions and isolation; appeals to international law and – if just, necessary, and effective – multilateral military action.”
In his concluding remarks, Barack Obama stated:
“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it’s our willingness to affirm them through our action.”
Does this mean that what makes us exceptional is our cowardly approach to using autonomous drones in Pakistan where we are killing many people – including children – and that the White House fails to acknowledge this?
Are we also an exceptional nation where the Supreme Court has ruled that excessive force may be used by police officers against anyone who leads them on a high speed chase? Is it also interesting that even if the suspect is cornered police can also use excessive force if they feel it is warranted, even if the suspect turns out o be unarmed.
As the Chicago Tribune reports: “In the past, the court had said police may use force to stop a fleeing motorist because he represents a danger to the public. But the law has been unclear on whether “deadly force” can be used against the occupants of a stopped car.”

Court sides with cops in deadly chase

Now Americans have a greater reason to be paranoid if the police pull you over at a routine stop.
The whole idea that our so-called freedom provokes such an offense and outrages that Muslim goat herders on the other side of planet are going to give up everything to come here and blow stuff up is beginning to really sound stupid right now.
I mean, we have been told that this is why we are terrorized, it is all because of this exceptionalism and freedom that we have.
Our freedom and exceptionalism that our president touts like a brand advertisement is pretty much compromised with the threat of a militarized police force, drone strikes and the assassination lists that have certain American citizens that are targeted for mere thought crime and expressing one’s own anger about how human rights are no longer a priority in this so-called free country.
The fact is right before us now despite the happy pap the president is speaking, we no longer govern ourselves, as in a government of, for, and by the people. The awful truth is that America likes it that way, and that many war hawks, neo-Cons and psychopaths in power want to see the United States be a battleground and awaits the moment where the body of shadow leaders give the go ahead to go rogue for the world power that awaits.
Consider the nonstop number of U.S. military actions around the world these days and ask yourself: When did Congress last issue a formal declaration of war?
It seems a bit too late to revive the constitution and Americans are stunned to move out of the way of the steam roller called tyranny that will flatten any and all that defy. The implications of many Americans from the lowly to the high and mighty in crimes against the state will become the norm in just a few short months.
Not enough Americans will admit that the whole threat of terrorism was used in order to open the dialogue about the police state and the dialogue has been favorable because whenever we witness the lights and sirens chasing someone, we immediately think that the police state is good thing and that the surveillance apparatus is working.
Americans are not aware that they are facing a privacy danger, a danger of being murdered by their own government.
The executive branch of government has now successfully elevated itself above the law, state and local police forces are now having the brutality blessed and allowed by the supreme court and it continues unabated as Americans seem numb and ill informed.
Don’t expect to hear anything in the mainstream media about how the executive branch has destroyed things like habeas corpus, due process, and the legalities that are being overlooked with regard to torture and unlawful searches and seizure of property.
The mainstream media has showcased seizure of property in the past; however, it is reported that the property is seized because of some argument over fees that are unpaid and whether or not the owner of said property is racist and therefore does not deserve to own anything.
What we don’t get is that if a President can set aside habeas corpus, murder American citizens based on unproven suspicion, what makes us think that he will honor a first, second, or any other amendment to the Constitution?
We already have the Supreme Court siding with the police state by allowing deadly force during high speed chases, so tell me how the police state will support and allow an armed citizenry?
Come on, the truth is right in front of you—and all the defending of the police state got us to this point. The NRA has supported the military and the police, but how long will that last now?
Obama has now said that the backbone of the New World Order has been this new-found love for the military industrial complex – and we nod like cows reading dictionaries not realizing that the fix is in.
We always say that we don’t want the Soviet Union to happen here, or the Stasi, or Nazi Germany to happen here and yet we have unwittingly secured that one of these horrible forms of police state governments will be the jackboot stamping on your face forever.
Take a look at what violent extremism looks like in other countries – and then let us talk about the expansion of homeland security and police actions that justify deadly force in a country that says it is free.
Those who live under the gun and wish to rebel will be the new terrorists.
The terrorists will have to be confronted with a counter terrorism task force, A task force that will have to be well equipped with more ordinance, high technology and man power.
This secures the backbone of a country under the spell of the shadow government. The cryptocracy in their shadowy Bilderberg meet ups are discussing what to do when the United States goes rogue.
I think we all know what will happen.

President Obama Speaks to West Point Graduates

The Fall of the American Empire… And What We Can do About It

The karmic lesson has come home to roost & fucking let it cum !!!
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln
January 27, 1838

By Joachim Hagopian

Global Research, June 04, 2014

Region: USA

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Culture, Society & History, Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

Goodbye to the America we once loved. Since it has been taken over, hijacked by  oligarchs dancing to the tune of global hegemony, the US as the beacon light of Western civilization, has already crested having run its course. In all its glory, it had its run. Now operating from the shadowy, secret cabal of  the World’s central Banks and billionaire mansions around the world, the New World Order descends upon a poisoned, with a permanent era of austerity and impoverishment.

Living in the most powerful and richest country on earth, Americans are lamenting and mourning what once was in their sentimental nostalgia for the onetime greatness they now have lost. But then they are suddenly jarred back to the real world reality they face, worrying over an uncertain future where the only certainty is the American Empire has seen better days in its angst-ridden spiral downward into despair and oblivion. While Isaac Newton looks down from above and reminds us, “What goes up, must come down,” a faint, far off sound can be heard, “Bye, bye Miss American pie…”
In a way the more rational and logical nature within us may be saying good riddance to the only world superpower that abused its privilege and authority, choosing to flex its military muscle in bloodthirsty lust and hollowed out glory. Its unquenchable thirst for more power and control over its earthly dominions have come at a heavy cost to both the American people and a severely exploited and victimized Third World. Two decades ago when the US was the only superpower left standing after the shattered demise of the Soviet Union, rather than continue to be the beacon of light and liberty for the rest of the world, like in Rome a millennium ago, an overreaching military Empire won out.
When no other nation on earth was left to compete with America as its enemy, from Reagan and George Bush senior through Clinton to George junior and finally to Obama, the US government has consistently elected to place its highest priority on out-of-control military spending, choosing to overextend its military might on multiple defeated warfronts while bleeding its middle class dry as its sacrificial lamb. And now what are we left with – by design a Middle East and North Africa comprised of hopelessly failed states, compliments of US Empire’s King Midas touch-in-reverse. “Destabilize, Will Travel, Inc.,” sadly that is what American Empire does and stands for. And now its clutches are spreading, digging its fatal claws deep into the heart of sub-Saharan Africa, in the form of Special Ops boots on the ground, busily militarizing the entire world into death squads, more night raids, more civil wars, more sovereign nations destabilized and destroyed.
Obama’s desperate false bravado claim clinging to his notion of America’s exceptionalism heard last week at West Point, proclaims that the US is too good to have to live by the rules that the rest of the world must comply with. The psychopath is truly showing his mental illness living in his own delusional world. It’s time for him to wake up and smell the rot he has brought not only to America but the entire world.
At some point, the out-of-control, two-headed, red, white and blue monster had to be stopped. Fomenting unrest in every corner of the globe, the US Empire agenda has promoted and is now forcing the East versus West showdown along every border nation with Russia and China. After aggressively and foolishly pinning the sleeping giants in, poking the Bear in the eye with the US backed Nazi debacle in Ukraine, and ramping up hostilities in Asia with more militarized zones of US presence in Philippines and South Korea, both Russia and China decided that they have had enough. US Empire transgressions have crossed their red line, and now they are finally through tolerating US arrogance and belligerence. They are now striking back with an emerging, growing alliance bent on stopping the global bully and one world policeman’s brutality once and for all. With the BRIC nations of not only Russia and China but also the emerging, resource-rich giants India and Brazil along with South Africa, the US dollar as the international currency is about to crash and burn. China is about to come-a-calling as the US creditor demands its due. Unable to pay up on its bloated debt, thanks to its reckless incompetent leadership, the United States of America is about to financially go belly up. Enter the UN Agenda 21.
Under the misguided, inconsistent leadership of two-faced Obama wavering constantly between in-your-face bully and egg-in-his-face wimp, his over-the-top, hot air rhetoric has become empty and meaningless. His psychopathic lies have destroyed any credibility or trust he once had. Meanwhile, American Empire’s longtime arrogance and aggression has only alienated the US from the rest of the world including its allies, while betraying US citizens both domestically and globally, forcing them to now pay for the sins of its leaders both past and present.
Look at how our government has failed our veterans. After promising to take care of them, sending them off to die and be harmed in battle, they have forsaken them letting them die in droves while criminally cooking the books hoping no one would notice its antiquated, overstretched and thoroughly broken system. It is neither a Republican nor a Democratic issue, only a human issue. After using our precious resource of young men and women willing to go off and fight for our nation on some far off foreign land, once they return home damaged in desperate need of help, care and support, the US government has simply abandoned them, pushing them away as discarded and forgotten into some invisible corner to die. If the US government can do this to our vets, it will certainly do it to the rest of us.
America is rotting out from within. Long neglecting its needy and poor currently living in war zones called inner cities, an angry, growing, disenfranchised class that has also had enough finds itself with nothing left to lose. With more than half of this country’s two plus million Americans of color trapped in prisons, the US is but one false flag away from declaring martial law and unleashing its FEMA roundups. Targeted will be those fighting back, the activists, dissidents, dissenters, the destitute, any and all Americans not part of the one third of the US population that make up the military security complex will be considered fair game. All those Halliburton-refurbished and newly built, empty privatized prisons at tax payer expense await to be filled by shackled and betrayed Americans of all colors.
The decimated, shrinking middle class can no longer find jobs. They don’t exist anymore in America, except sweeping up McDonald’s parking lots. Of course the growing underclass gave up looking for jobs that weren’t there for them decades ago. The upward mobility and rising standard of living that was once the bedrock of the American way of life guaranteed for generations, has joined the graveyard heap of the once shining but now dead and lost.
Without a manufacturing base, the US population is totally dependent on exports from China, Mexico and everywhere else that traitorous, disloyal US transnational corporations greedily chasing higher profit margins ran off to like outsourcing roaches. Like the roaches they are, the McDonalds and Walmarts may survive the coming nuclear winter holocaust, but the forsaken Americans they betrayed won’t. The retail stores and malls are increasingly becoming empty or going out of business. When the richest 85 people on the planet possess as much wealth as the bottom economic half of the entire global population, you know the oligarchs have already won and the lights are about to go out on the rest of us.
The karmic lesson has come home to roost. With rusted out bridges ready to literally crumble and fall in America, they serve as a sad yet fitting metaphor for the state of the once great nation that no longer exists. Over its own struggling people, the US Empire chose to build its spreading might-make-right boots on the ground strength, overstretching its killing machine tentacles to every continent off the backs of its hardworking taxpayers, while the long neglected infrastructure and safety net back home collapse.
The forsaken American population finds itself more in poverty (46.2 million people) as well as more in debt ($57 trillion) now than ever before in history. Young generations of the college educated are having to pay off mounting college loan debts ($1.2 trillion and rising) that without jobs they can never even hope to repay. Rather than marry, have kids and buy homes like generations before them, they worry how to pay the light bill and avoid eviction. Sometime when we weren’t looking, the American dream died in the last century. Foreclosures and unpaid debts are now sucking the lifeblood out of Americans.
After bailing out the banks and Wall Street, Americans learned that they got royally swindled. Yet the corporate white collar crime only continues unabated. Not one executive from the top firms that nearly brought down the financial system spent even a day in jail over the 2009 housing scandal. Instead the Justice Department had the coldhearted audacity to go after the home buyers charging them with mortgage fraud. The two-tiered, stacked and fixed legal system has one set of rules and consequences for the rest of us while the economic war criminals literally and legally get away with murder. While middle class Americans have been forced to give up their once comfortable lifestyle, the rich only got richer. And now whose going to bail out the middle and lower classes fast going under? The oligarchs? The disparity between the rich and poor in this nation – never worse since the Great Depression – spreads like an evil cancer. Tax burdens continue plaguing the disappearing middle class while the superrich got bailed out, only to make obscene record profits while still enjoying Bush-era tax cuts milking trickle-down Reaganomics for all the scam it is worth.
The oligarchs have managed to buy off virtually all the national governments in the world to do their NWO bidding. They believe they have already won. And why shouldn’t they? Their strategy of systematically dumbing down the world masses with GMO’s, chemtrails and homogenized propaganda piped into their brains 24/7 operates like a bad drug, causing people to fear and obey their masters as pliable, acquiescent, mindless robots who simply go quietly into the night to their eugenic slaughterhouse according to the oligarch plan to cull the global herd down from over seven to a mere half billion. With living conditions and gross injustice around the world only going from bad to worse, people feel increasingly helpless and powerless. Depression and suicide are skyrocketing, particularly among war veterans (nearly one each hour) and adolescent and young adults (third leading cause of death).
But what the oligarchs worry about the most in their undying addiction to power and control is an awakened, critical mind that sees through their lies and deception. They shudder at the thought of the masses of the world actually waking up, and seeing their blatant theft and destruction for what it really is. And what they dread and fear the most is a worldwide grassroots movement of mindful human beings united in committed solidarity who refuse to play their game any longer. As a collective power of world citizens acting together as one, as free-thinking individuals who vastly outnumber the 1%, we can make a difference. To roll over and play dead, we are merely joining the ranks of the many already walking dead amongst us. As individuals with minds of our own, we do have the power and strength to say enough is enough. We just need to come together and exercise our collective free will and power.
Two thirds of the fifty United States have already called for a Constitutional Convention, giving the legal authority to convene and in open debate formulate amendments that can restore rule of law that has criminally been violated and missing since the Patriot Act. As citizens we need to learn what the US Constitution actually says. The Supremacy Clause in Article 6, Clause 2 of the US Constitution states “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land.” If a federal statute fails to meet the mandatory condition that it “is in pursuance” of the Constitution, then it simply is not the rule of law. Any federal law enacted that does not fulfill this “pursuant clause” requirement becomes null and void. That means that Bush’s Patriot Act, his Authorization to Use Military Force Act (AUMF), most of his and Obama’s presidential executive orders and every National Defense Authorization Act including the 2012 one the US Supreme Court recently decided to not review giving the military full authorization to arrest any citizens in their homes without charges or warrants and imprison for an unlimited length of time without trial, legal access to representation or Constitutional rights, are all invalid because they are all unconstitutional. All laws enacted that are not in compliance with constitutional law are simply not legally enforceable.
Thus, even though since 9/11 the US government has betrayed its citizens inasmuch as it has betrayed the Constitution and its rule of law, from the local and state levels we the people can fight back through the courts. Every elected representative, every judge and every soldier in America has taken a sworn oath to uphold the US Constitution. By their actions too many in the federal government and military have clearly violated their oaths. Those who are not full blown psychopaths need to allow whatever conscience they do have to permit them to stop violating constitutional law through their overt and brutal acts of tyranny and oppression.
Other steps that we citizens can do to take back our country can be implemented on many fronts and many levels, legally, economically, socially and ethically, empowering the resourcefulness and independence of our local communities and states. We need to start growing our own food using community coops. We need to go off the grid as much as possible with green energy utilizing the sun and wind power. These can also be community owned and shared. Worker owned cooperatives offer an ideal economic model by which to begin exercising increasing localized and regional independence. The power of corporate boycott and bartering are also viable tools at our disposal. Together we as a people and a human race can become activists committed toward positive change. Since our federal government has failed us miserably, we can neither rely on it to take care of us nor care about us. It will be left up to us as citizens to come together as communities and begin taking care of and caring for each other.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can be consulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now focuses on writing.

TORAH MEETS SELENE: THE MOON AS ARCHIVE

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Cosmic War • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/06/torah-meets-selene-moon-archive/

While we’re on the subject of space news, there is once again more high strangeness coming out about the subject, in addition to the high strangeness of building bigger rockets. As we noted in the past three days’ blogs, the Orion project appears slated to continue, for the foreseeable and near future, the theater of chemical rockets while the real technologies are quietly developed and utilized elsewhere. But there’s more strange strangeness that fits right into the category of “the downright bizarre,” as there is now talk of using the Moon to archive copies of the Torah(the Hebrew text of the first five books of the Bible):
Ancient Texts to be sent to the Moon
Taking the Torah to the MOON: Sacred Jewish scroll could hitch ride on Google spacecraft to preserve Earth’s culture in event of an apocalypse
Now, for readers of my book The Cosmic War: Interplanetary Warfare, Modern Physics, and Ancient Texts, this will sound a little familiar. In that book I posited a “paleoancient” (the redundancy meaning to emphasize “beyond ancient”) civilization in high antiquity that was a space-faring civilization. I also posited a war was fought by extraordinarily sophisticated and destructive technologies, and that some of these technologies were deliberately destroyed, and some, which could not be destroyed, were hidden, and I suggested our local celestial neighbors, the Moon and Mars, might have been convenient hiding places. These technologies, I averred, consisted primarily of a kind of information, and hence, their hiding places could be loosely construed as “archives” or “libraries” or to use that most shop-worn term in the alternative community, “halls of records.”
And now, by dint of modern technology and similar apocalyptic contexts, the same thing is being proposed again. Notably, some of the texts that they wish to secure on the Moon are precisely Vedic texts, texts which recount that ancient cosmic war, and the I Ching, which could be tied – albeit at first glance implausibly – to Sumeria, Babylonia, and its celebrated “Tablets of Destinies.” One can imagine other texts that should be included: the Egyptian Pyramid, Coffin, and Edfu temple texts, the Mesopotamian Epics, and so on down through the Magna Carta and other documents. 

There is a possibility, however, lurking behind these ideas, and in my usual bent toward “high octane speculation,” it has to be mentioned. What if such calls are really calls masking another project, namely, behind the search for “good sites to secure an archive,” the search for things already archived? After all, the search for good archival sites for present things could easily be made to mask or disguise a search for archival sites for past things. And with the talk lately from NASA that it wants to send a probe to Mars to bring back “stuff” for “study,” such a program could easily be made to mask a search for some of those hypothesized “archived things” from paleoancient times.
In short, I suspect what we may be looking at here is another act in the “space theater” that we’ve been covering in recent weeks. To be sure, archiving human texts and traditions is a praiseworthy effort in its own right, but such schemes can be made to do double duty and to fulfill more than one objective. I suspect, probably like many readers here, that behind all the talk of “taking things there” and “bringing things here” that we are looking at an attempt to search for, and if possible recover, some of those things.
The interesting thing is why now? Why this strange talk of archiving things on our celestial neighbors against the possibility of an “apocalypse”, a meme almost exactly parallel to what I proposed in The Cosmic War. It’s that strange parallel that makes me think we’re looking at yet another bit of “social engineering” taking place, along the order of “look at what we found while we were attempting to archive our stuff! We found other stuff!” It’s a clever idea, really, when you think about it.

The Shattered Trust is the End of the USA

 

who IS "voting" this shit into ALL LEVELS of office in this Country ...that' s right , mr & mrs America ...look the fuck in the mirror !!!      ...U

by John Galt
June 3, 2014 00:00 ET
In all honesty, admit the truth my friends and fellow followers of freedom:
Who can you trust in the United States of America now?

A Montage of Obama's "If You Like Your Plan Keep It" Lies

The President, Supreme Court, and both Houses of Congress have lost the trust of the American people and rightfully so. They are elected to enforce the laws, write the laws, and protect this nation within the bounds of the Constitution, yet they violate that trust an almost hourly basis with decisions, votes, and edicts far in excess of their granted power within the laws of the land. If anyone trusts these people, then one must ask themselves; if “I” do not trust them, how come few if any nations,be they ally or enemy trust their words, deeds, or actions as honest and trustworthy?
Of course as a result of the abuse of the people’s trust, the very regulators within the maze of bureaucracies created by the Federal Government now feel they can act with impunity, stealing people’s property, their rights as defined by the Bill of Rights within the Constitution, and ultimately their freedoms. Since their are no consequences, no enforcement of the Constitution nor the rule of law they are now telling people how to live their lives and those who do not fall in line with their beliefs are both persecuted then often prosecuted. The level of distrust extends from the head of the various cabinet level departments down to the janitors within those fiefdoms. Sadly, it the distrust now extends to the United States Post Office even where individuals put items in the mail unsure if they are being checked for value to be stolen or monitored for a National Security Agency or FBI premise to create an arrest. Yet most Americans just mutter their distrust and disgust and whine like an old Soviet citizen, doing nothing in the mean time to change our nation’s government.
Enough of the bitching and moaning about the Federal Government however; the state governments are far, far worse. The state and local police forces in many locales now believe they can behave with impunity against innocent civilians like throwing flash bang grenades into cribs of infants even thought the evidence used to justify a “no-knock” in violation of the 4th Amendment raid was dubious at best:

The World Is Nine Meals From Widespread Revolution

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Dave Hodges

The World Bank is boldly proclaiming that extreme food shortages and subsequent food riots will take place in the near future largely due to the rapid increase in food prices.

In their recent report, only released a few days ago, the World Bank cites the disturbing fact that there have been 51 food riots in 37 countries in recent memory due to high food prices and the further escalation of food prices has no end in sight. The World Bank further speculates that the present state of food prices could lead to political instability and this is the kind of stuff that wars are made of. And what is the number one cause of rising food prices according to the World Bank? It is the increasing demand (see attached PDF)  for food from a growing population inside of China. The future military implications should be self-evident.

The staple crop of wheat has risen 18% in the past year.

Are Food Prices Being Artificially Being Manipulated for Purposes of Political Control?

Before answering this question, it might be more prudent to ask if the food distribution system can survive the economic catastrophe’s which are poised to ravage the world’s economies and subsequent money supplies. If the dollar ever collapses, the rest of the world currencies will fall like a row of dominoes. If the multinational corporations are broke, how will food be shipped? Remember, the United States has a $17 trillion dollar deficit, a $240 trillion unfunded set of liabilities and the derivative debt is placed at about $1.5 quadrillion dollars! Setting aside your cognitive dissonance for a moment, what does your common sense tell you about the long-term viability of the dollar?

There are even more dire factors to consider. The elite are busy buying up the world’s water supply as evidenced by T. Boone Pickens and his continuing acquisition of the Ogallala underground water aquifer which dominates water supplies from Texas to South Dakota. The Bush family has purchased water rights of a similar proportion in Paraguay and the globalist beat goes on.  The bottom line is that there are too few people controlling a disproportionate amount of the world’s water supplies. And without the proper distribution of water, there is no food cultivation. Add to this concern is the fact that GMO’s are highly vulnerable to devastation because it is a genetic mono-crop.

Some have speculated that food prices are being artificially being manipulated upward, through hording, in order to create a food shortage issue which could result in desired political instability and could result in a large scale war. This may or may not be true. However, what is undeniable is that the world is poised to experience a monumental food crisis that could kill off a significant number of the world’s population.

The Historical Precedent of Using Food As a Weapon

The two most notable examples of dictators using food as a weapon in order to destroy the free will of their people, comes from the regimes of Stalin and Hitler.

Josef Stalin engaged in his own Soviet-style Holocaust when, in 1932 and 1933, an estimated six to 20 million people in the Ukraine died from starvation when Stalin implemented his prescription of “hope and change” policies in order to eliminate the Ukrainian’s desire for becoming their own nation-state.

Upon assuming power, the Stalinist Communist regime rapidly nationalized the food industry and forced all of the region’s farms into collectives. This is exactly what is happening under the Obama administration and the dramatic rise of corporately owned farms.

Stalin’s version of the Holocaust came to fruition in what history has dubbed, the “Holodomor,” in which millions perished in only a two year period when the Soviet government began to exterminate the Ukrainian population by taking control of food and food production. And why would Stalin do such a thing to his own people? The Ukrainians were discussing and publicizing some very dangerous ideas about freedom, liberty and the ability to act on their desire for political autonomy. Americans would be wise to heed this warning as despots hate freedom. The parallel between Stalin and collectivist farms and American corporately owned farms is very disturbing.

Hitler proclaimed that food could be used as a tool “…to discipline the masses” and he did not hesitate to use the control of food as a type of carrot and stick in which he would reward accomplishment and punish failure as well as to ferment preferential class distinctions in which his armed forces received the largest food ration cards. Skilled workers who were engaged in industries critical to the building of the German war machine, received food ration cards which were slightly less in value. And, finally, the prisoners and the Jews received the lowest valued Nazi food ration cards. Food ration cards were also utilized as incentives to increase industrial production and were also increased in value when productive Nazi workers would be promoted. Food ration cards were diminished in value for the failure to meet Nazi production goals. Hitler’s use of what psychologists refer to as classical conditioning techniques reduced the will of the German population to a pack of Pavlovian dogs who were conditioned to be totally dependent upon the government for their survival. The presence of 50 million Americans on food stamps would certainly make an applicable parallel to Hitler’s practices and the potential for Obama, or another future president to follow in Hitler’s footsteps with regard to food management.

The United States Recent Role in Promoting Food Instability

As last November’s controversy surrounding the $36 reduction in food stamp entitlements continues to settle in, reports covering the past six months, regarding the government spending over $80 million to protect its own buildings from food stamp rioters, continues to concern those who are following the rapid increases in food prices across the planet. Is this the way that this administration is preparing for food riots?

Although it is possible that the controversy surrounding the food stamp program will not spread beyond the 50 million Americans that are affected, but that is not likely. I am convinced that the government’s spending of over $80 million protect its buildings was merely an excuse to pre-position security forces on the street in anticipation about what’s coming, which is full-blown martial law. Food and the distribution of food, will play a central role in the administration and application of of any potential martial law declaration. And why would I entertain an idea that is so outrageous?

The Government’s Historical Overview of the Control of Food

In December, 1974, National Security Council directed by Henry Kissinger completed a classified study entitled, “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.”The study was based upon the unproven claims that population growth in Lesser Developed Countries (LDC) constituted a serious risk to America’s national security.

In November of 1975, President Ford, based upon the tenets of NSSM 200 outlined a classified plan to forcibly reduce population growth in LDC countries through birth control, war and famine. Ford’s new national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, in conjunction with CIA  Director, George H. W. Bush, were tasked with implementing the plan and the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture assisted in the implementation of these insane genocidal plans. Today, we also see the manifestation of NSSM 200 through Bill Gates’ eugenics policies of mass sterilizations and vaccinations on the continent of Africa.

NSSM 200 formally raised the question, “Would food be considered to be an instrument of national power? … Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth?” Kissinger has answered these questions when he stated that he was predicting a series of contrived famines, created by mandatory programs and this would make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary in this modern day application of eugenics in a scheme that would allow Henry to have his cake and eat it too in that the world would finally be rid of the “useless eaters!”

That Was Then and This Is Now

Third world population control, using food as one of the primary weapons, has long been a matter of official covert national policy and a portion of President Obama’s Executive Order (EO 13603), National Defense Resources Preparedness is a continuation of that policy. Only now, the intended targets are not the LDC’s but, instead, the targets are the American people. With one out of six Americans on food stamps, and a reduction of these benefits under way, the policy of using food as a weapon against the American people already has a significant beachhead.

With the stroke of his pen, Obama has total and absolute control over all food where his EO 13603 states:

e)  “Food resources” means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals, irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption.  “Food resources” also means potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers, all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal or marine fats and oils, seed, cotton, hemp, and flax fiber, but does not mean any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product.

(f)  “Food resource facilities” means plants, machinery, vehicles (including on farm), and other facilities required for the production, processing, distribution, and storage (including cold storage) of food resources, and for the domestic distribution of farm equipment and fertilizer…”

This unconstitutional EO is particularly disturbing in that it clearly states that the government has control over anything that is “capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals…”  If you thought that you and Fido were going to get through the coming food crisis by storing and consuming dog food, think again.

How will farmers maintain the nation’s food supply when all fertilizer, their farm equipment and all of their vehicles are under the control of one power-hungry President?

Conclusion

If food is controlled by the few, can we count on them to be so altruistic so as to hesitate to use food shortages to manipulate the many? Or, can we blindly trust this administration to never behave like Stalin?

In summary, the World Bank has declared a global food shortage from which they predict widespread violence. The World Bank further states that there is no end in sight for the crisis. Historically, food has been used as a weapon to starve millions to death as a means to politically control overpopulation or political dissent. The United States has shown historical interest in creating food shortages in the past. President Obama has created an EO which will give him total control over food and food production in a self-declared crisis. Corporate farms are increasingly replacing family farms in a case of putting all of our agricultural eggs into just a few baskets. Finally, the currencies of the world are on the verge of collapse, so how would food be moved to where it is needed if the  corporations cannot monetize food production and shipment?

Most Americans do not have 30 days of food supplies in their pantry. Many do not have three days. We are indeed nine meals removed from revolution. A starving man is not a cooperative citizen.

Some of you understand the significance of the phrase, “out of chaos comes order”. The rest of you may soon learn the meaning of this phrase on a very personal level.

Whether this unfolding crisis is contrived or not, you tell me, do we have anything to worry about?

Dave Hodges is the Editor and Host of The Common Sense Show.