GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY

http://www.globalkleptocracy.net/

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 INFLUENCEBritain'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 INFLUENCEARUBA
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
MONACOINTERNATIONAL 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 CORPORATIONTHE "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

TRUTH-TELLERS

THIRD WORLD TRAVELER

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

EMPIRE OF CHAOS

PATHOCRACY: THE GLOBAL ORDER

PLUTOCRACY CARTEL

REAL WORLD ORDER

DISINFORMATION NATION

BEYOND THE MEDIA MATRIX

THE WAR RACKET

HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS

BARBARIANS IN SUITS

CRITICAL THINKER QUOTATIONS

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 KLEPTOCRATSEXECUTIVE

Al Gore / Hillary Clinton / Bill Clinton

"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

CONGRESS

Senator Phil Gramm

"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

JUDICIAL

Justice John Roberts

"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

PENTAGON, LAW ENFORCEMENT, INTELLIGENCE AND SURVEILLANCE

Keith Alexander-NSA

"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

Jaime Dimon-Chase Bank / Robert Rubin-Citibank / Lloyd Blankfein-Goldman Sachs

Henry Paulson-Goldman Sachs / Tim Geithner-Federal Reserve / 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 / Warren Buffet

"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

Shah Pahlavi-Iran / 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 / Fedinand Marcos-Philippines

"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

Mohamed Ben Ali-Tunisia / 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 / Yoweri Museveni-Uganda

Paul Kagame-Rwanda / Robert Mugabe-Zimbabwe / Sani Abacha-Nigeria

"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 / Augusto Pinochet-Chile / 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 MONEYDRUG 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 WARREGIME 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

UNIVERSAL ID CARDTOTAL INFORMATION CONTROL - 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

SURVEILLANCEINTERNET, 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 CONTROLPRESERVING 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 AUTHORITARIANISMThings 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.
http://www.globalkleptocracy.net/

GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY

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 SETTLEMENTSFEDERAL RESERVEBANK OF ENGLANDCENTRAL BANKS OF MOST NATIONS

GLOBAL BANKING CONGLOMERATES

THE 25 LARGEST BANKS IN THE WORLD (2012)

TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

THE 25 CORPORATIONS WITH THE GREATEST GLOBAL IMPACT (2011)

ENERGY CORPORATIONS(a partial list)

ROYAL DUTCH SHELLCHEVRONBRITISH PETROLEUMEXXON/MOBILTOTALCONOCO PHILLIPS

WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS(a partial list)

LOCKHEED MARTIN - USABOEING - USABAE SYSTEMS - BRITAINGENERAL DYNAMICS - USARAYTHEON - USANORTHROP GRUMMAN - USAEADS - BRITAIN/FRANCEL-3 COMMUNICATIONS - USAFINMECCANICA - ITALYUNITED TECHNOLOGIES - USA

FINANCIAL SERVICES INSTITUTIONS

LARGEST HOLDING COMPANIES (2013)

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATIONCITIGROUP INC.WELLS FARGO & COMPANYGOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC.MORGAN STANLEYGENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION

LARGEST ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANIES (2012)

BLACKROCKUBSALLIANZVANGUARD GROUPSTATE STREET GLOBAL ADVISORSPIMCOFIDELITY INVESTMENTSAXAJP MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENTCREDIT SUISSE

LARGEST HEDGE FUNDS (2011)

BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATESMAN GROUPJ.P. MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENTBREVAN HOWARD ASSET MANAGEMENTOCH-ZIFF CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GROUPPAULSON AND CO.BLACKROCK ADVISORS

ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIETIES AND CLUBS(a partial list)

UNITED NATIONSWORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)WORLD BANKINTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)TRILATERAL COMMISSION (TC)BILDERBERG GROUPCHATHAM HOUSE / ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (RIIA)CLUB OF THE ISLESPILGRIMS SOCIETYCLUB OF ROME

THINK TANKS(a partial list)

TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS(a partial list)

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATIONFORD FOUNDATIONCARNEGIE ENDOWMENTGATES FOUNDATIONSOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION

TAX HAVENS, SECRECY JURISDICTIONS AND MONEY LAUNDERING CENTERS

HIDING THE WEALTH OF THE RICH AND INFAMOUS

CITY OF LONDON"City of London" is the secrecy jurisdiction of choice for the global mega-wealthyboth directly and from Britain's overseas territories and crown dependencies

WALL STREET (NEW YORK CITY)

DELAWARENEVADAFLORIDAWYOMINGSOUTH DAKOTA

HONG KONGMACAO

THE VATICAN

COUNTRIESUNITED STATESBRITAINPANAMASINGAPORETAIWANMALAYSIAJAPANCHINABELIZEISRAELLEBANONTURKEYCYPRUSUNITED ARAB EMIRATES (DUBAI)BAHRAINSWITZERLANDGERMANYLUXEMBOURGMONACOANDORRALIECHTENSTEINNETHERLANDSIRELANDKENYAMAURITIUSSEYCHELLESNUESAMOAMARSHALL ISLANDS

TERRITORIES AND ISLANDS UNDER BRITISH INFLUENCEBritain's overseas territories and crown dependencies funneltrillions of dollars of laundered money from around the world into London banks and real estate

GIBRALTARGUERNSEYJERSEYISLE OF MANCAYMAN ISLANDANGUILLABRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDSBAHAMASMONSERRATBERMUDAANTIGUA AND BARBUDABARBADOSDOMINICAGRENADAST. KITTS AND NEVISST. LUCIAST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINESTURKS AND CAICOS

ISLANDS UNDER NETHERLANDS INFLUENCEARUBABONAIRECURAÇAOST. MAARTENNETHERLAND ANTILLES

MONEY LAUNDERING BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS{a partial list}

BANK OF AMERICAJP MORGAN CHASECITIBANKWELLS FARGOWESTERN UNIONAMERICAN EXPRESSCREDIT SUISSEUBSHSBCSTANDARD CHARTEREDBARCLAYSLLOYDS OF LONDONROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND

AND MANY OTHER BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD

DYNASTIC FAMILIES AND INSTITUTIONS

EUROPEAN DYNASTIC FAMILIESHOUSE OF WINDSOR (Great Britain)NETHERLANDSBELGIUMLIECHTENSTEINLUXEMBOURGSPAINDENMARKNORWAYSWEDENMONACOINTERNATIONAL BANKING DYNASTIESROTHSCHILDSROCKEFELLERSKUHN LOEBWARBURGLAZARDGOLDMAN SACHSISRAEL MOSES SEIFLEHMAN

THE CITY OF LONDON CORPORATIONTHE "CROWN", THE "CITY", THE "SQUARE MILE"

THE VATICANVATICAN BANK

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN THE UNITED STATES(a partial list)

ROCKEFELLERBUSHCLINTON

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN ASIA(a partial list)

BRUNEIPHILIPPINESCHINA (PRINCELINGS)

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA(a partial list)

SYRIAJORDANMOROCCOSAUDI ARABIAKUWAITOMANQATARUNITED 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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Les Leopold

General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935

BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS
FEDERAL RESERVE
BANK OF ENGLAND
CENTRAL BANKS OF MOST NATIONS

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL
CHEVRON
BRITISH PETROLEUM
EXXON/MOBIL
TOTAL
CONOCO PHILLIPS

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

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION
CITIGROUP INC.
WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC.
MORGAN STANLEY
GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION

BLACKROCK
UBS
ALLIANZ
VANGUARD GROUP
STATE STREET GLOBAL ADVISORS
PIMCO
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS
AXA
JP MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
CREDIT SUISSE

BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES
MAN GROUP
J.P. MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
BREVAN HOWARD ASSET MANAGEMENT
OCH-ZIFF CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GROUP
PAULSON AND CO.
BLACKROCK ADVISORS

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

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
FORD FOUNDATION
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT
GATES FOUNDATION
SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION

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

DELAWARE
NEVADA
FLORIDA
WYOMING
SOUTH DAKOTA

HONG KONG
MACAO

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 INFLUENCEBritain'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 INFLUENCEARUBA
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

EUROPEAN DYNASTIC FAMILIES
HOUSE OF WINDSOR (Great Britain)
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
LIECHTENSTEIN
LUXEMBOURG
SPAIN
DENMARK
NORWAY
SWEDEN
MONACOINTERNATIONAL BANKING DYNASTIES
ROTHSCHILDS
ROCKEFELLERS
KUHN LOEB
WARBURG
LAZARD
GOLDMAN SACHS
ISRAEL MOSES SEIF
LEHMAN

THE VATICAN
VATICAN BANK

ROCKEFELLER
BUSH
CLINTON

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