248 comments discussing Chris Hedges’ Amerika.

Embarrassing.

whatever,  you choose Young Man to add, paints evermore clearly the
agenda in pursuit of which you are certainly overpaid - note: this is not an ‘insult’
- clever of you to have landed the gig,  attendant salary and benefits - not to
mention, no assets at risk

Cass Sunstein’s NSA-cyber-troll legions’ amateur-hour rhetoric is both self-
revealing and self-defeating

Fear,

Your straw men won’t fly.  Like borrowing the image of Bedford Falls’ Potter to condemn all wealth?  Or is a straw man something akin to conjuring phantom evil Neo-Cons when labeling anything that moves like a conservative?

Are these your personal examples of straw men?

RE: Yes, I will say it again.  I am left thoroughly embarrassed.

there you have it - your straw men don’t fly

Well, there we have it.

I wrote that this subject would receive nearly no attention while the latest “Great Debate” concerning Chris Hedges’ corporate Amerika would continue with great voracity.

I wrote that no one has been able to identify who these phantoms are that make up the storied “Global Oligarchical Cabal”.

218 comments, and running, concerning corporate Amerika.  Only 5 people commented on Gitmo.

And no one, not one person, has yet identified the global cabal pulling the strings of six billion human beings.

-

Liberal-minded Amerikans LOVE to talk about themselves.  Most LOVE to give their “compassionate” and “all inclusive” bona fides.  Liberal-minded Amerikans also avoid looking past U.S. borders.  The universe simply does not exist apart from the United States.

Yes, I will say it again.  I am left thoroughly embarrassed.

168 comments after the last Hedges article.  All still arguing about the same tired subjects.  All, at their root, talking about themselves.

This story on GITMO?  Nearly non-existent now.

I cannot begin to describe my embarrassment while talking to old friends around the globe.

Fear,

Help me decipher your last post.

Are you implying the vaunted global Oligarchy is made up of the American “Robber Barons” you grew up hearing so much about?

I am sorry.  I sincerely have no idea what your last post was about.

take it easy, old chap - one shouldn’t take it personally that,
along with the nouveau rich (e.g. The Donald) there
will never be a seat at any oligarch’s table for any of us… as
for Mr. Forbes little list and the ‘real players’, their names are
now proscribed… some background:

When Forbes Magazine published its list of the top 25 wealthiest oil men in the
world (2005), it was interesting to find that none of the three Rockefellers on
the list are anywhere near the top. David Rockefeller, who heads the richest
clan in the world appears on the Forbes list as the 6th wealthiest oil man—and
the 182nd richest man in the world. Appearing as the 15th wealthiest oilman
and 336th richest man in the world was Laurence Spelman Rockefeller—David’s
brother. Withrop Paul Rockefeller, the former Lt. Governor of Arkansas—and
the son of former Arkansas governor Withrop Rockefeller who is another
brother of David. The younger Winthrop appears as the 21st wealtiest oil man
on the Forbes list, and the 421st richest man in the world. Ironically, listed as
the wealthiest oil man—and the 82nd richest man in the world is Marvin Davis,
owner of the Davis Petroleum Company. His wealth is estimated, by Forbes, at
$4.5 billion. And, no where on the Forbes list will you find either the Rothschild
clan or the Nobel brothers.

Bertie Charles Forbes, grandfather of Forbes Magazine publisher Steve Forbes,
was a reporter for the New York American and Leslie’s Weekly before founding
Forbes Magazine in 1917. Bertie Forbes was a financial writer who chased the
wealthy who wintered in the millionaire’s retreat founded by William Rockefeller
on Jekyll Island, North Carolina for news crumbs missed by the big city dailies.
Wall Street investment banker J.P. Morgan took Forbes under his wing, using the
young reporter as a conduit to leak the financial stories he wanted public, and
to spin the stories printed by his detractors to lessen their impact. As a protege
of Morgan, success quickly followed Forbes when he created Forbes Magazine.

Forbes Magazine, which today claims Microsoft founder Bill Gates—with a nest
egg of $60 billion—is the wealthiest man in the United States, has shielded the
Money Mafia ever since they told Bertie Forbes that the truly rich don’t talk
about their wealth. Forbes learned that lesson shortly after publishing his first
list of the 30 richest Americans. Heading the list was John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
whose wealth exceeded $1.2 billion (at a time when successful bank presidents
earned around $5,000 per year. When the list was published Rockefeller sent a
scathing letter to Forbes demanding a correction, insisting that his personal
wealth was no where near a billion dollars. Among the now invisible rich,
Forbes 1918 list were Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, J. Odgen Armour,
William Vanderbilt, Vincent Astor, Daniel Guggenheim, Charles M. Schwab, J.P.
Morgan, Cyrus McCormick, Russell Sage, Jacob Schiff, Pierre DuPont and James
Stillman. Since most of them own shares of the Federal Reserve, it is unlikely
that any of them became “less rich” as time passed.

Fear,

Why?  Why are you reciting the names of wealthy individuals and families?  The names of people you’ve siphoned directly from the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires?  Dropping dozens of names doesn’t move this conversation forward.  Does it?

And you too with the easy and small-minded insults.  What an odd waste of time.

-

Here is why I ask this question.  Why I am able to ask the question less the need to belittle or insult another for not seeing current events my way.

Context.

There are millions of millionaires about the globe.  Multiples of thousand of Billionaires.  These people, for the most part, have truly distinct but varied personal goals.  Most hold an allegiance to their nations of origin.  Most specialize in a particular industry, both globally and/or nationally.  Human beings such as Czarnecki of Poland, Slim of Mexico, Karamehmet of Turkey, Almasri in Jordan, Bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Oppenheimer of South Africa, Qinghou of China, Abramovich of Russia, Mori of Japan and Ambani of India. - These are much more than names from a list siphoned from the Internet.  And the list is but the very tip of the Global context.  These are real people with countless divergent interests.

The question is basic.  If we are to entertain the theory of an global Oligarchy we cannot avoid an answer.  How are these multiples of thousands of the planet’s wealthiest people, all spanning the globe, rooted in different cultures and languages, most in direct competition with one another, most with their own national pride and national interests, most rarely ever agreeing on one course of action, working in concert to control the planet?

As I’ve already said, this fundamental question cannot be avoided if the theory is to be taken with a sense of gravity.  Display the cause.  Display the effect.  And, please, display these things by explaining them globally.  Not with the United States at the center and apex of the universe. 

-

Context

India produced more billionaires in the past five years than has the United States.  For over a decade China has produced more billionaires than any one nation on the planet. 

They. Them.  The Oligarchs.  The Wealthy Cabal of the globe.  The Meritocrats.  Who are they and how are they working in concert to control the planet as a whole? 

Can we simply stop repeating the theory and show the connections and the effects?

Mr. Carson,

Why must you always lean so heavily on petty insults when you’re unable to address a direct question?  The insults are so very unnecessary.  It’s not as if I’m smacking your Grandmother around.

If you look back you’ll see that you’ve never actually attempted an answer.  You simply changed the subject.  Also, I’m not requesting links.  Of any kind.  I am simply asking you a direct question.  A question I have posed to well over one-hundred others with never an answer.

Whom are the people which make up this World Financial Cabal you write of?  Lend me some names and their connections.  Display some cause.  Display some effect.  Display a concerted, interpersonal, effort by real people in these endeavors.  Make your case less the all too simple insults.

Lastly, exactly why are you so opposed to being asked a direct and fundamental question?  I am more than willing to answer one question (not 30) if you address this one today.

-

134 running comments after the latest Hedges article.  All debating the same subjects we see after each and every Hedges piece.

18 comments here by a very small handful of people.  Already the story has moved off of the index page into oblivion.

This story has international ramifications.  No one is interested in the remaining six billion people on the planet.  Nearly everyone here talks about themselves.

18 comments.  This is embarrassing.

...typical…? a few of them can be identified… and to be clear,
Young Man, you may Go Right to Perdition, hauling
reservoirs of water for them, but you’ll never get a seat at their table…

here’s a few more of them, just to get a better idea who’ll never invite you for
dinner

In Europe, the names are Baring, Erlanger, Fould, Kuhn, Lazard, Loebb, Mallet,
Mirabaud, Nobel, Rhodes, Rothschild, Schneider, Schroder, Seligman and
Speyers. In the United States, the names of Astor, Carnegie, Dillon, DuPont,
Gould, Mellon, McCormick, Morgan, Scaife, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller are the
most commonly known titans of banking and industry. We’ve heard the names
and associate them with wealth. But real wealth—wealth so vast it can’t be
measured by any of today’s yardsticks—resides within those families. Their
wealth can be measured only by the worth of the dividends and interest they
earn on their money since their core wealth is beyond comprehension. They are
the new aristocrats. They are the spine of the New World Order. The names that
will surprise you are the names of lesser known shareholders of the 1914 stock
issue for the Federal Reserve Bank. Names like Walter Burns, Clinton Dawkins;
John W. Davis, John Foster Dulles, S. Parker Gilbert, Edward Grenfell, William
Leffingwell, and Elihu Root.

GRYM

You dipstick I gave you links last week about this very thing and you keep on whining about nobody giving you any answers.  I also gave you links today about the Denbeaux report.  I can tell that you never went there, that’s why you say “there was noting new”.  That’s BS.  I am tired of your BS.  You owe me and a host of other people a sackful of answers. But you don’t want an answer.  You just want to bitch and moan.  A rational conversation cannot be held with people like you.  Scram.

fearnotruth,

Your answer to this very direct question I ask is the most typical.

The shadow people.  Those who cannot be named. “Them”.

Mr. Carson,

Do you believe asking 30 disparate questions is an answer to a single direct question?

Whom are the people which make up this World Financial Cabal you and others write of?

RE: Who are the people who make up this World Financial Cabal?  This
vaunted evil Oligarchy pulling the global strings.

GRYM goes fishing - sorry, your bait’s stale… chew on this:

Ask anyone if they can guess who is the wealthiest person in the world and the
odds are the first name you will hear is Bill Gates or Sam Walton’s children. Or,
perhaps it will be some other name that appears annually on the Forbes or
Fortune list of the nation’s richest families—names like Larry Page or Sergy Brin
from Google, or Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos, or Yahoo’s founders, Dave
Filo and Jerry Yang since these are the “blue chips” of the cyberworld.

Every now and then, because they heard the names growing up, someone will
mention names like Rockefeller or Rothschild or one of the other titans of
banking or industry like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor or even Guggenheim. What
you won’t hear are names like Burns, Dawkins, Gilbert or Leffingwell. Yet those
are the names of wealth. In fact, each of those families could write a personal
check and buy the vast holdings of Gates, Walton, Page, Brin, Bezos or anyone
else on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest families.

Real wealth is so invisible that not only is it never seen by the working class,
the families who control it are never mentioned by the media they control.
Paparazzos don’t lay in wait to get their picture—in fact, they are seldom, if
ever, photographed in public. The tabloids don’t write about them because their
lives are as private as their wealth. They live on the pinnacle of the world, but as
far as the world is concerned, they don’t exist.

GRYM

Would you be kind enough to give me your definition of a Police State, a Quasi-Police state, and a Constitutional Republic with Citizen Freedom state?  Which one is America?

You also said that Progressives don’t think globally.  Why would you say that?  You referenced Gitmo and Hedges when you said it.  What Global thinking would disqualify a Progressive?  Can you give me your definition of Global?

Do you think like a Republican, a Conservative, a Religious Right politico, or are you a Progressive.

Is the Avatar Go Right Young Man any indication of your thinking?

If after reading the Denbeaux Senate Report you found nothing new, what was it that you found the first time you read it?

Would you agree that the Article about the release of the purported Wikileaks documents is in very high disagreement with the Denbeaux Senate Report?

Did you check of any of the footnotes to the Denbeaux report?  Have you checked to see if you can get a video copy from C-Span who aired it originally?  Does this article provide any references for you to check out?  Would you if it did?

Do you claim that the Denbeaux report is not accurate?  How about this article?  It is vastly different from the Denbeaux Senate Report - don’t you think?  If not why not?

Do you think the United States Government has conspired to cover-up malfeasance and corruption concerning the wars, Gitmo, Abu Gharib, Renditions, Torture, Massacres, Civilian Deaths, Corporate War Profiteering, Corporate Armies, War Propaganda, Denigration of Resource States, ending of Constitutional rights for American Citizens, Empire building, the House passing a bill to allow armed predators to patrol the American skies, Spying on Americans, Corrupt Government, to name just a few.  Well what do you think?  Is the Conservative way of thinking the right way - no pun intended?  What say you?

The “World Financial Cabal” - The “Global Oligarchy”.

-

Who are the people who make up this World Financial Cabal?  This vaunted evil Oligarchy pulling the global strings.

I have asked the same question of hundreds of believers.  I’ve never received an answer.  At most I get some vague reference to “Them”.

RE: All this “double agent crap” is too much for me!

indeed - too much for almost everyone - why it works so well - if knowing how
it works is of no interest… so what… join the wikileaks lemming brigade…
finally, “hope and change you can believe in?”

Al Qaeda: Pawns of CIA Insurrection from Libya to Yemen

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D. - TARPLEY.net - April 3, 2011
http://tarpley.net/2011/04/03/al-qaeda-pawns-of-cia-insurrection-from-libya-to-yemen/

After two weeks of imperialist attack, Libya is being mangled by al Qaeda
terrorists, civil war, NATO air raids, cruise missiles, Predator drones, and C-130
gunships – all made possible by the CIA-backed al Qaeda rebels of Cyrenaica.
US, British, French, and Dutch commandos have taken leadership of the rebel
forces, and are arming them with modern weapons in flagrant violation of the
arms embargo specified in UN Security Council resolution 1973. Al Qaeda is
also stealing heavy weapons on its own, as the president of Chad has reported.
The singing tomorrows of the fatuous US-UK color revolution rhetoric have
dissolved, exposing the hideous reality of a brutal, cynical, imperialist drive to
destroy the modern nation-state itself.

[...]

CliffCarson:  I may have misunderstood TDoff.  What I picked up from the article was mostly fear-mongering—or at least that’s what it sounded like to me.
  All this “double agent crap” is too much for me! What is so wonderful about the WikiLeaks is that it exposed enough “diplomatic crap” to give the U.S.
a fine chance to self-correct—if they had the sense to do so.  Unfortunately ...

10:38a the day after this and the latest Hedges articles appeared here on TruthDig.

-

* 108 comments covering all the same arguments after the Hedges reprint.

* 8 regarding GITMO.

What is my point?  Progressives, or the more liberal-minded, typically do not concern themselves with global affairs.

-

Mr. Carson,

So far I’ve not found anything contained within the Seton Hall investigations, or, for that matter the latest Wikileaks release, that I had not already seen or been aware of.

I’ll revisit the issue as more information becomes available.

I feel that Julian Assange should be greatly praised by the world.  The absurd cruelty and immorality of those who actually run the world was exposed by his organization.

But what does a despotic organization do when confronted by truth?  They try to turn the tables on the informer.

That is called spin.  And the World Financial Cabal has the Media outlets to give it out 24/7.  This Senate hearing was held long before the World became aware of Wikileaks.

I had become interested in the torture of detainees since Manadel Al Jamidi was tortured to death at Abu Gharib on November 4, 2003.  Some of you may recall the Bush Administration denial of Torturing going on and their smear of any source that reported such.

And a very small few of you may remember that the Bush Administration hired writers from around the World to pose as citizens of various countries including the United States to write dis-information pieces in news outlets. 

I wrote then about the death of truth.

Obama came along and promised a return to Moral and Ethical conduct if elected.  He lied.

Our Country - and the rest of the World is increasingly being battered by spin and murderous blood profit empire building.  This scenario cannot end well and end it must because once the common people of the World have been forced into a corner to fight for their very survival the blood letting will really begin.  Hopefully mankind will survive without going thru another Dark ages.

Only time will tell.  At my age I will be spared the horror, my progeny won’t.  Neither will yours.

Possibly the Arab Spring is a harbinger of a “Peaceful” correction to the darkness that has overcome our world. 

Too few people run this world.

That old saying that “Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely” is being proven by events over the history of mankind.  You and I are witnesses.

The whole extrajudicial mess at Guantanamo makes a mockery of the principles this nation was founded on and a slap in the face of those of us who continue to believe in those principles.

RE: By Cliff Carson, April 25 at 7:08 pm Link to this comment
What a propaganda piece this story is.  It is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the truth
about Gitmo.

A few years ago on C-Span a live Senate Hearing was conducted.  One Professor Mark Denbeaux
was given the task of assessing the U S records of close to six hundred detainees at Gitmo at that
time.  The result of that report - which the Senate discussed live on TV - makes this report here
look like a whitewash of what has happened at Gitmo.

hear, hear!

some have been saying for some time that Wikileaks is a sophisticated deflective source
disinformation psy-op

so what could be the purpose of this installment?

I’ll venture this: it’s now coming out that the Libyan Rebel ‘leadership’ is comprised of one or
more Gitmo alums - insightful analysts suggest they’re double agents, very likely trained and
tasked by their Gitmo ‘torturers’ - of which nothing of this sort is expected to be found in the
‘leaks’, the official denunciation of which, and damnation of their ‘treasonous whistle-blower’
source is ‘absolute proof’ of their ‘authenticity’ - text-book deflective source disinformation

Gerard

I got the impression TDoff was saying it is absolutely criminal what our Government has done at Gitmo, and at all the other torture sites also.

Is that right TDoff?

GRYM I’m not sure of your statement although I took it to mean you think it is depressing that our Government could do these evil things and those who should be informing the public about the atrocities just sit on their duff and try to forget what our government did in our name.

In the Link I provided, if you will go there, you will find several other links to follow ( all about the Denbeaux report).

You will also find a White House hireling putting out a memo planning to to release rebuttals of the Denbeaux report.  See if you consider it spin.

This article is an example of one of them.  Please read the Denbeaux report.  In it you will find for example that only ONE detainee can be proven by the United States Army of having been captured by them on a battlefield - a 15 year old boy - and there is a story about that.  Also the Army could only claim that just 21 of all the detainees that ever went through Gitmo was ever on a battlefield of any kind.

You might remember that Rumsfeld stated that it was dangerous to let any of the detainees go because over 60 who had been released had returned to be captured on the battlefield - once they had been released.

At the Senate hearing (which I was watching live) Denbeaux challenged for any of the Generals to name ONE - just One.  None of the five Generals could name a single recidivist.

There is also a report on that.

There is also a lengthy article about this also.

And Denbeaux’s report is fully footnoted should anyone want to challenge his statements or findings.

If you want to find out what is really running our Government - visit the link I gave.  The report used to be on a Government site, I haven’t found it lately.

TDoff:  So the alternative is: It’s okay to keep the entire travesty buried alive? And to keep a couple hundred more or less innocent victims incarcerated forever? And to let those who devised and sanctioned this crime against humanity write books explaining how waterboarding really doesn’t kill anybody? And that after all it’s really none of your damn business?

The pentagon is absolutely correct in it’s position that the release of these documents is extremely dangerous to the security of the United States, and may result in an horrific increase in terrorism attacks against US. Make that SHOULD result…
For once the whole world realizes that the United States military captures, renditions, incarcerates and tortures totally innocent victims for years and years, filing no charges against them, and allowing them no counsel or contact with anyone other than their captors/torturers… and that the chain of command, including the top officers, military and civilian, lies about it… we are liable to attack, deservedly so, from anyone who believes in justice or the rule of law, or is not a totally immoral, vicious, crazed, moronic inhuman misfit.
So we in the US of A do need protection. From the monsters we have created and become, and the results of their/our despotic actions.

Carson,

Two articles were reprinted this A.M. on TruthDig.

-

7:57P

-67 comments discussing Chris Hedges’ Amerika Police State theories.  Tomorrow’s A.M. will see well over 100.  The same arguments and opinions after every Hedges article.

-1 lonely call to attention on the subject of GITMO.

The last article to appear here regarding events in Kosovo saw three comments before it moved down the list into oblivion…...

Sad.

What a propaganda piece this story is.  It is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the truth about Gitmo.

A few years ago on C-Span a live Senate Hearing was conducted.  One Professor Mark Denbeaux was given the task of assessing the U S records of close to six hundred detainees at Gitmo at that time.  The result of that report - which the Senate discussed live on TV - makes this report here look like a whitewash of what has happened at Gitmo.

According to the report by Professor Denbeaux, 93% of all detainees at Gitmo at that time were there because they had been sold to the U S Army for the bounty offered for any Al-Qaeda or Taliban.  No proof was required that those people offered for sale was anything other than innocent victims of people looking to cash in on a pot of gold.  The U S had dropped fliers over Afghanistan and Pakistan offering up to $5000 per head.

Remember the Senate report was based on the U S information on these detainees.  None of those at Gitmo were caught on the battlefield by United States soldiers.  In a United States Court less than 3% could ever be convicted of anything against the United States.  One of the General’s testifying at the Senate Hearing admitted that there was no evidence than any detainee there at the time had ever fired a shot at the United States or been on a battlefield to fight the U S Army.

This article seems to have borrowed some snippets from the Senate report, but the story as a whole has very seriously mis-represented what was presented in the Senate Report.

I ask you to google Senate Report Gitmo Professor Mark Denbeaux and compare that report to this article.

Let me know what you discover.