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Colonel Wilkerson: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making
Americans are starting to understand that the U.S. is an oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. (Even the chair of the Federal Reserve can't really disagree.)
That's true of war-making and foreign policy, as well.
Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - former chief of staff to Colin Powell, the guy who wrote Powell’s famous speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary - notes:
Who's behind the White House, and who's therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less?
I think the answer today is the oligarchs. Which would be the same answer, - incidentally, ironically, if you will - for Putin in Russia.
The people who own the wealth, the people who therefore have the power and who more or less (and I'm not being too facetious here) buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy.
Indeed, we have thoroughly documented that war is bad for the economy and makes us poor. But war is very good for a handful of defense contractors and banksters who make huge sums from backing unnecessary war.
Wilkerson explains that war profiteers feed off conflict:
INTERVIEWER: One of the things that always hits me is that - once you look at the predictions of who would win in world war 2 - mostly what I've seen is that by 1940 or '41 it was pretty clear Hitler was going to lose.
If you're in the German monopoly capitalist class doing analysis, you're thinking, "Now this is not going to lead to anything good for us. Why aren't we bailing?"
But the forces of refusing to accept the reality of it were far too strong.
COLONEL WILKERSON: That's a good point. I would say - and I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, normally - but I would say there were forces behind that shadow, if you will, who were doing quite well.
Swiss, Germans, Americans and others who were more or less feeding off the conflict, and got very wealthy feeding off the conflict.
Just as they did off of World War 1, even more predominately with respect to the United States, in particular. German reparations and so forth.
We made a ton of money off of World War 1. And we really didn't contribute a whole lot, if you remember. We were really only there substantially for a very short period of time, roughly April 1917 until Armistice Day.
So, there is a group which is interested in this kind of thing - and this group alarms probably more than any other in the world, particularly in my own country - that is interested in a constant state of war, or as near a constant state as possible.
Because they sit behind all the belligerents and make money.
(Indeed, bankers profits so much from war that they often back both sides. For example, American banks funded the Nazis during WWII when America was is in the middle of a war against Germany.)
Interestingly, Wilkerson points out that war profiteers can make a financial killing simply by stirring up volatility:
In some respects this shadow behind the power that makes money off war period - no matter who's the belligerent - makes money off that volatility now.
Especially with computers that are able to to assist them in doing so. Like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. With computers, you can do it at lightning speed. And you can do it in a nanosecond. And you can make billions in that nanosecond.
And you don't care about what you're doing to the real economy because you're raking in the dough.
In other words, destabilizing countries and creating chaos can make modern war profiteers rich.
And Wilkerson- who was an eyewitness to the end of the Cold War - points out that big American defense contractors are largely responsible for our current dispute with Russia:
Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush really accomplished what, I think, is one of the real diplomatic feats of the 20th century: the reunification of Germany, whether we agree with it or not. And they did it without a shot being fired....
One of the reasons they could it is that they assured Gorbachev and later Yeltsin that NATO that they would be quiescent, it wouldn't move, it wouldn’t threaten Russia.
In fact, I was there when they promised the Russians that they were going to make them a member [of NATO]. An observer first, and then a member ....
Well that fell apart when they perceived right quickly that we weren't really serious.
And then we start - under pressure from Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon and others - to sell weapons to Poland, and weapons to Georgia, and weapons to Romania, and everyone else we could bring into the fold.
Under those pressures and others we started to expand NATO, and stuck both our fingers in the Russian eyes, so to speak, immediately.
It's clear to me why Putin has responded to Georgia and why he's now responding to Crimea and Ukraine. That's what great powers do when they get concerned about their so-called "near abroad".
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do RastaLuciferians smoke Devil's Weed?
LOL.
I should think so!
"Who's behind the White House, and who's therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less?
I think the answer today is the oligarchs. Which would be the same answer, - incidentally, ironically, if you will - for Putin in Russia.
The people who own the wealth, the people who therefore have the power and who more or less (and I'm not being too facetious here) buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy."
I really wish it was possible to convey this message to the average American and other citizens around the world. We are humans and would love to believe that the wars we fight in are "Patriotic". We also would love to believe that politicians are elected because they will represent our best interests. That normalcy bias and patriotic belief couldn't be farther from the truth. No matter what country that you live in, the politics of your country will be controlled by those who control the wealth of that country. Ppl think that getting elected as President means that you actually make the decisions. The last President who thought he had the power was JFK and we know what happened to him. The only difference between our Presidents in America & let's say Putin is that the Russian Oligarchs are not trying to create a one-world government. The Oligarchs controlling the US & much of Europe are down right committed to controlling the natural resources & banking of the entire world. Wars are fought for pure corporate imperialism aka the Oligarchs want to control your countries major natural resources first and foremost. You don't have to be a "political scientist" or major to understand this basic concept. But it does take a little bit of critical thinking skills to follow the money all the way to the top to figure out who's running the oligarchy in your country. Lots of dots to be connected and names that need to revealed.
Amen to:
"That normalcy bias and patriotic belief couldn't be farther from the truth."
We ARE living in a BIZARRO MIRROR WORLD !
You can add the former chief economist of the IMF to those calling this an oligarchy:
The Quiet Couphttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time....Ugh, I beg to differ on the first sentence. If the majority of people still think voting matters then they're not aware of the real ruling class.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Fq228lR2A
"You control the debt....you control EVERYTHING. This is the ESSENCE of the banking industry"
Nothing is as black or white as it seems. Just like those who are running the show (Big money, special interest, bureaucrats/military and politicians. All working for their own interests first), a mostly changing dynamic operating predominately in the grey area. All I really know is that reading Zerohedge comments is one of my favorite pastimes. You folks are something else, keep it up!
and one of the last {nearly} free speech zones on the intertubes.
:0]
Congress is, of course, working to curtail internet free speech, Markey being the latest Mouth of Sauron on the matter.
And if the Citizens United case decision outcry was any guide, we can count on the Left to celebrate fining and jailing people for political speech. No one told them HuffPo is a corporation....
And the right wing will do its part by hatin' on queers and Mexicans enough to make any reasonable, Constitutionally, or hell, Enlightenment-based dissent dismissable as "conspiracy theory" and/or "hate".
What if you had a country that went full Orwell and {just about} nobody noticed??
How many did not know our government was lying about WMD? Really.
90%. You underestimate the universality of ignorance. This is a country of yahoos; always has been.
It worries me when the Leftists start worrying about such things as liberty and freedom. I smell a foul odor... http://video.pbs.org/video/2365245528/
Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush reunified Germany? Give me a break! Nothing like rewriting history huh?
You're completely correct; it's a ridiculous statement and what it means to me is, there's not much point in listening to this particular windbag.
Gorbachev re-united Germany with an agreement by the occupying powers; so what'sit and whos'it got to say something but it didn't matter; Gorby sold E. Germany back to the Germans to pay off a due loan. funny things happen when countries are bankrupt. LIke France selling us the Louisianna purchase, for instance.
For a guy that had his head burried in code for the last 30 years you sure seem to act like you know a lot about things you're not expert at.
Truth is usally stranger than fiction. Granted this guy Wilkerson is just another bit player but, he says he was there when promisses were made regarding NATO expansion. I'm reminded of the fact that the money powers in the world make decisions controlling the world, not governments...check out Smedly Butler testimony before Congress.
Talk is cheap; and nowhere moreso than in high level political meetings; even if Bushy and whatnot said X or Y it doesn't matter; and no grown-up who was present took it as serious. Look up the actual process of the re-unification; it's enlightening.
Will Barrack Obama's Real Father Please Stand Up:
http://winteractionables.com/?p=11682
IMO, it is Very Possible FMD is Daddy; the physical resemblance is uncanny.
Others have thrown Malcolm X in as Dad.
I am 90% convinced BHO Sr is NOT dad.
If I had to bet, I would go with FMD. Beyond the physical similarity, the Chicago Connection added in makes the case.
Obumpma said he is Irish.
I thought Bath House wa one of those Ethiopian Jews...
YAWN!
this is the guy who wrote the biggest lie in modern history and now he's saying what?
Whatever he's saying is not worth listening to; as you imply. He's just a flack. another empty suit.
As I already stated in my comment above, I believe, that, at that time, he did not know he was lying, but rather had been tricked by others into believing those lies.
i'm not impugning his morality, i am questioning his ability to perceive reality.
Yeah, that always reminds me of a saying by Mark Twain, that the best liars believe their own lies. There is a strange and surreal sliding scale between lying without having any clue about knowing that is actually a lie, to being willfully blind, so that one deliberately does not investigate to discover that one is lying, which one could have and should have done, to being consciously aware that one is being dishonest.
Human minds seem to be extremely complicated jungles, without necessarily there being any clear and coherent path through them!
It reflects on his being a flack and a piece of office furniture. He couldn't be bothered to look up the UN reports that were on the internet; their inspection teams had been all over Iraq, twice; with a fine tooth comb and a microscope; nothing, nada, zilch. What happens when you "assume" your boss is for real and properly informed.
At a functional level, what difference does that make? You are the master or a useful tool to the master.
EDIT: The key is to be the third option, extract yourself from the game to as great a degree as is possible.
neocons in the office of special plans, likely working with Israeli contacts, fabricated the evidence in order to justify an attack they already wanted, already wrote about. In other words, they lied to Wilkerson - anyone blaming him, but not the ziocons in the OSP is either a shill or just an ignorant twat.
The Lie Factory–How the Neocons & the Office of Special Plans Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence on Iraq
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory
Most, virtually all of these people were Zionist Jews. You either think that is relevant, or you're dishonest or dumb. Neoconservatism itself was essentially a right wing Jewish movement. We aren't supposed to refer to a 'Jewish lobby' but the 'Israel Lobby' is essentially that - and essentially right wing to moderate. There are a great number of incredibly admirable leftist, libertarian, and progressive/pro-peace Jewish people, but the problem is that isn't who is running AIPAC or the ADL or SPLC who have an incredibly Judeo-centric, and essentially right wing ethos.
“The machiavelian threefold game of the neoconservatives”
you put five people around a table, and then you bring in a number of sheets of paper with information on them, some of it conflicting. each one has the same information. then you ask each one to make a cognizant report on the information. then you provide a reward for reading an alternate version of the report prepared by someone else not at the table. see where this is going
this article is an updated version of smedley butler's comments 70-80 years ago. nothing has changed. the ziocon murderers who were fomenting war then are fomenting war now.
Money is important for the oligarchs, but as Woodrow Wilson quoted from an industrialist of his time, there is a shadow of others behind them that scare them... usually called the Secret Govt or other names like Illuminatti etc through the ages... as the NWO is just a coming out party for them, the OWO without the veil, and behind the SG is the real puppet masters, which takes one into the land of woo-woo, and in our 'dumbed down' state, it's impossible to even comtemplate anything more than what we can physically see, so the best we get seems to be those waking up and once again discovering the oligarchs behind the throne, without the knowledge that that is but the next level up the pyramid of power.
Col Wilkerson's progress in waking up is nice to see as so few are doing so, but then that is expected in a realm based in the adage 'as above so below'.
This guy behind the guy behind the guy?
I doubt it is that complicated. It is just simple, superficial greed.
yes - the "Ascended Masters". I was just musing on how "revelations" from the likes of Col Wilkerson, Paul Craig Roberts, Wm Blinney and others mirrors, in the physical realm, what Blavatsky claims was revealed to her decades ago about the "Externalization of the Hierarchy". They are letting themselves be known, bit by bit, and it seems at an accelerating rate. Read the CFR and other open publications, articles, opines, etc.... they're not hiding. they know that none of them will ever be prosecuted, and they know that the constitution is a facade for old people and dumbed-down masses. congress really IS a potted plant and Federal Judges execute the will of the Oligarchs no matter what the "democratic process" does. just like in Palestine, Egypt, Georgia, Ukraine.... no "will of the people" matters. all a sham.
Money is important to the degree that it is able to control the murder. However, controlling the murder is more important than the money, when push comes to shove. Therefore, the innermost circles of power, or the hidden top of the social pyramid, are cloud lost, whereabouts unknown, since that power is based on being able to kill, without being killed.
It really is an inseparable money/murder system, where the power to rob is backed up by the power to kill. There is clearly positive feedback between those powers. It gets even more hyper-complex when history has been a tendency to make information more important than power, and thus, for the War Kings to morph into becoming the Fraud Kings. However, the basics were always about killing others before they could kill you. Militarism was always the supreme ideology, and it continues to deserve to be so. The BIG PROBLEM these days is that the old-fashioned foundation of slavery "do what I say or I will kill you," has become "do what I say or I will kill almost everyone, possibly including myself too."
I regard it as elementary systems analysis that human civilizations were controlled by the people who were the best at backing up deceits with destruction. However, those systems of organized lies, operating robberies, have no currently known ways to survive being pumped up by technologies which are trillions of times more powerful. In my opinion, the people who were the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence have become criminally insane, because their psychological and political habits are no longer adapted to a world in which the technologies became trillions of times more powerful.
That is why I recommend the imperatives of going through intellectual scientific revolutions, to generate radically different ideas about how to operate the combined money/murder systems. The NWO agenda appears to me to have become criminally insane to try to continue to implement. However, there are still chronic political problems which are becoming more and more imperative to resolve, through evolutionary ecologies which necessary have their death controls at their core.
NWO... question is, does it mean New WO (vs Old WO) or New_World Order (vs Old_World Order)?
btw, the origins of "NWO" are from novus ordo seclorum, i.e. the new order of the ages
and Bush was imho thinking about a renewal of the Pax Americana. He should have said the New New World Order (NNWO)
Better yet: google translate:novus ordo seclorum means "The new order is dispatched" - not that I trust google or wiki.
And when Bush said it, it rang more like a "one-world order," a "prison planet" ruled by the upper echelon of the oligarch class - the trillionaire club.
BTW: Fuck Alex Jones.
I think that the truth would be accurately stated that PLUTOCRATS and their corporations are running the show, getting us into wars. This could also be stated in terms of class warfare.
What is the difference, you ask, between calling this a Plutocracy vs a Oligarchy? Well, if conspiracy theories violate Occam's Razor for most of us then the idea that Oligarchs are controlling events rings false. To say "OLIGARCHS" is to claim that a small cadre is in direct conspiracy...a complicated web of lies and secret meetings and written agendas then must be invoked.
And, worse, stating that it is a secret Cabal of Oligarchs breaks our unity and prevents system-oriented solutions such as separating money from politics.
Better to say PLUTOCRACY is the problem. Better to side step the impossible list of evidence/insider reporting that would be required (impossible!) to "prove" conspiracy.
By simply stating that the natural profit motive is what brings like minded wealthy people together and that the only "conspiracy" is the universal agreement to become rich and beggar everyone else in the process...only then can we come to agreed on solutions.
Take money out of our democratic system.
Yeah, novictim, I too tend to like the plutocracy as the noun in the phrase oligarchical plutocracy. However, that does not really capture the essence of the problem, since the source of the plutocrats' "wealth" is the power to make money out of nothing as debts, which was achieved by applying the methods of organized crime to dominate the political processes, in order to create a series of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, in which system the personhood of corporations, and the ability of private banks to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, are two of the most important of those enforced frauds, at the foundation of the current system.
That is so difficult to label, since it really is about ORGANIZED CRIME controlling the public powers of governments, so that governments become the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, i.e., the oligarchical plutocrats, which operate through the legalized lies of corporations, which effectively have more human rights that flesh and blood people do, and some of which specially privileged corporations can do things like legally create "money" out of nothing, that no flesh and blood human being is allowed to do.
Corporatocracy is another word that I sometimes use, but that still misses the main point that the established systems are fake "democracies," through which about 99% of the theoretically public powers have been privatized. It is also fascism, in the sense that the corporations and governments are blended together. However, even the bad reputation that fascism has does not come close to the theoretical level of social insanity that exists in a system where the government is the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, that drives that system towards irreconcilable social polarization and irreparable environmental destruction, because almost everything is controlled by huge legalized lies, with a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, in which almost everyone operates through attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance, because the entire society is so totally dominated by legalized lies that the society as a whole is psychotically insane, in ways were even the ruling classes are destroying the systems in which they too live, while those they rule over are supposed to be citizens, but act mostly like Zombie Sheeple.
In general, I am not aware of any well-known language to label what kind of social system it is when almost everything is based on legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, since the paradoxical way that works (where the biggest criminals are the pillars of society, who are entrenched as supposed to respectable and admired), does not have any coherent social science labels for that phenomenon that I am aware of.
Anybody know what ancient Greek would be for "organized crime" to stick in front of the "ocracy?"
Radical Marijuana, the word you are looking for is imo Kleptocracy
the wiki article is worthwhile to read, btw, as well as the one on Cronysm
Yeah, Kleptocracy has the connotations of compulsive stealing, as an irrational obsession, which goes too far to be regarded as somehow still rationally done crime. That is one of the words which might tend to cover some aspects of the ways that the ruling classes have become criminally insane, and so, engaging in too much social robbery, too blatantly, for too long. However, I do not like using that word, because, in my opinion, its connotations tend to trivialize how evil the activities are.
The same goes with the phrase "crony capitalism," which I think grossly understates how bad the consequences of their actions will become.
My basic view is that the language we use is almost totally the biggest bullies' bullshit, which means that there are NO good words to describe the realities of the social facts. Most of the debates strike me as ridiculous, because they use words which have gradually had their meaning inverted and perverted.
The meaning of the word "money" was gradually perverted and inverted by the banksters, and that pretty well universally applies to every other word, so that a word like "capitalist" has practically no good meaning left, since again, the crucial point is that the banksters are legally allowed to make "capital" out of nothing, and arbitrarily rig interest rates, and pretty well the price of everything else, through their fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, which system nevertheless almost totally dominates the lives of almost everyone.
Everyone is trapped inside systems of enforced frauds, living inside systems of runaway debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits. In my view there are no generally understood words that can explain that to most people, because that would be like trying to explain "water" to fish.
Corporate Fascism.
I prefer Corporatocracy, I find it more exact
Mussolini's Fascists were for Corporatism, which is quite a different thing, and would not work in the US because of how US trade unions are, which is again very different from elsewhere
stop straining to put labels on what amounts to murder and theft under cover of politics and claiming to be "for democracy".
Murder and theft suffices.
The banksters have only two tools at their disposal to enslave us with: Big government, the more criminal the better and fraudulent-reserve banking.
Take those two things away and they have nothing to enslave us with and can't afford goons to pound us with.
The Banking Gangsters also own the Federal Reserve Bank. The FED prints money for the government to prosecute wars that the people would not fund in, say, a gold-based monetary system. In a gold-based system, the people could withdraw their gold from the banks, making it unavailable to our war-mongering government, and probably also causing the government to fall. So, it is the FED that enables our government to continue to grow and to continue sending our friends and family members to fight in wars we do not support, returning often much worse for the experience, under long-term care by the VA.
The oligarchy has stuck it's fingers in the ass of the Bear, and the Bear isn't happy (gay).
Please, name names.
Wilkerson is awesome - but he's gone from being careful with his words to tacit gatekeeping for some.
Paul Jay... well, he is a zionist/jewish gatekeeper. Just like Alex "crazy guns" Jones.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/09/paul-jay-portrait-of-an-anti-zionist-zionist/
Does that mean the proverbial ZOG runs the show alone? Of course not, and this is ever the strawman, but anyone who has spent time on capitol hill, or even in the pentagon, especially circa 10-15 years ago, not to mention state and especially treasury {treasury is locked up} and the Fed...
Come... come on George... as to foreign policy, Iraq happened for a bunch of reasons [oil not being the primary], but the fabications and policy influence of zionist jews was one of the top few causes.
Will all the zionistas in the fed, treasury, all over state, capitol hill, lobby groups - the fact half of us millionaires and billionaires are Jews, over half the private donations to both parties are jews - nuland and pyatt and yats jews..
they don't get a mention?
Really, dude?
I'm not saying you should lie, or be unfair.
I'm saying precisely the opposite.