According to a brand new book by Peter Phillips, the world is now controlled by a handful (actually several handfuls) of powerful/rich elites via interlocking capital exchanges spanning the globe.
This ultra small coterie dictates world events and expects results. However, they are painfully aware that forces from down below are growling, growing restless, very restless indeed!
Thus, Phillips’ riveting story of world domination by elites, a thoroughly researched analysis from A-to-Z: Giants – The Global Power Elite (Seven Stories Press, 2018)
Phillips forewarns on behalf of ninety-nine percenters (99%):
“There is growing concern among reformist elements of the transnational elite that unchecked inequality threatens the stability of global capitalism and that there must be some sort of redistribution. These elites have been scrambling to find ways to reform the system in order to save capitalism from itself and to undercut more radical challenges from below.” (p. 18)
Meantime, and along the way according to Phillips, wealth concentration has gone ballistic like a moonshot! In January 2016 only 62 people held as much wealth as one-half of the entire world, but within one year, by 2018, that figure narrowed to 8 people with as much wealth as one-half of the entire world. Stop and think about the implications. Is something about that awry, amiss, or maybe nonsensical?
“Wealth concentration is happening so rapidly that it is feasible that someday soon one man will hold more wealth than half the humans in the world.” (p. 21) Wow-Wow!
Is capitalism starting to “stink up the place” with wealth cumulation madness? Can the world community live with this or will there be an uprising as the elite’s bold rapaciousness increasingly turns into a public image of the Wicked Witch of the East?
Early on, Phillips explains the raison d’ê·tre for his wonderful beautifully written tome. It’s all about a discovery process to promote “greater democracy and equality” by explaining the vast wealth differences and the mechanisms of power behind the giants of capitalism. That is the crux of his work.
In his words:
“Understanding how power and inequality is sustained can perhaps offer us opportunities to fight for and win democracy and equality in today’s world.” (p. 22)
The harsh reality, however, is that Phillips’ greatest wishes may not materialize, meaning forget about the great democracy revival, no equality, nada, as the world turns, wiping-out all of the vestiges of democracy and equality. In point of fact, the loss of the effectiveness of democratic institutions (already) brings in its wake ironclad statism leading to purest of fascism, thus playing directly into the hands of the powerful elite, as their wildest dreams come true.
What are those wildest dreams?
Their brand of roughshod capitalism plays tough and requires strict subordination as jobs are shifted to low labor costs, fewer regulatory, lower environmental control regions of the world so that profit margins remain robust. This has been ongoing for over a generation. In order to maintain “roughshod capitalism” militantly strong statism is an absolute requirement.
Along the way, the rug is pulled out from under livelihood for labor, loss of decent pay, stripped benefits, bringing in its wake guaranteed loss of self worth plus degradation of dignity, which in turn spirals downwards into extremely deep fits of anger, elect Trump, “hate others,” tough language, glorify the strong man/nation/state as the only apparent pathway to retrieve loss of dignity.
By default, as surely as night follows day:
“It has become clear that the Global Power Elite uses NATO and the US military empire for its worldwide security” as countries shift from the “social welfare state to the social control (police) state.” (p. 226)
This conversion to strict statism is happening worldwide zip zip zip with lightening speed. Unfortunately if it continues on pace, it does not leave much room for Phillips hoped for reform of the global elite, meaning a return to a semblance of democracy and equality and good-paying jobs.
Phillips describes an elite world order, similar to observing an iceberg. Only the top 10-15% is visible. In the US, for example, there are two governments, one that’s visible that citizens are familiar with and a parallel top-secret org “visible to only a carefully vetted cadre” combined with global intelligence agencies working together as Deep State Networks. (p. 231)
The principals of this leviathan cadre are all interrelated as they literally control the world order, inclusive of everything from advertising for consumer goods to outer space missions.
Here’s one example, among many, demonstrative of how the sealed-tight world order network came into being, as explained by Phillips: In the mid 1970s at a time when the CIA was still subject to restrictions imposed by Congress and enforced by the president, intelligence officers of several major countries, including France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others, met at the Safari Club in Kenya with former CIA Director George H.W. Bush “to overcome constraints imposed by Washington, D.C.”
The outgrowth of that meeting was establishment of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) as the depository for funds for “off the books,” secretive covert operations, thus forming a Supranational Deep State that works willy-nilly outside of the bounds of nation/state control. (p. 232)
That’s but one example of several that delves into the how, where, and why today’s elite global power structure evolved into a covetous rapacious all-powerful behemoth.
This book skillfully weaves together all of the variant pieces of the elite world order, including names and positions, which leads one to question the validity of Phillips’ concept of a “top-secret elite global force,” as his book clearly outlines its entirety for all to see, full Monty!
Yes, of course, identifying the elite core is one thing, but carrying out policy is quite another, presumably the “top-secret” part.
Phillips does a remarkable job of pulling together all of the pieces into one webbed fabric of ironclad control over the mind, spirit, behavior, and livelihood of the world’s 99% via an elite core smaller than the quintessential, iconic 1%. (Suspiciously, a perfect depiction of George Orwell’s 1984)
Giants – The Global Power Elite (2018) is a mysteriously alarming formidable story.
Interestingly, Phillips’ book ends with “A Letter to The Global Power Elite,” asking them to change the ways of the world socio-economic system: “We absolutely believe that continued capital concentration and neoliberal austerity policies only bring greater human misery…. Wars, covert actions, externally-induced regime changes, propaganda media, and technological surveillance, all in the name of protecting the freedom to do business, is hurting humankind and will be stopped.” (p.320) That’s heavy stuff!
And this: “The change that needs to come to insure trickle-down becomes a river that is real and adequate for all human needs is not billionaire philanthropy, where the power elite handpick their beneficiaries, but rather the restructuring of capitalism itself.” (p.306) That’s heavier stuff!
And, of course, there’s always the fallback position, assuming people get pissed off enough, the old fashioned 18th Century French way.
Postscript: “People do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.”
(Maximilien Robespierre, 1758-94, beheaded 28th July, major figurehead of French Revolution & Reign of Terror (17,000 executions) member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly, and the Jacobin Club and outspoken advocate for the poor and for democratic institutions and campaigned for universal male suffrage in France, price controls on basic food commodities and the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and an ardent opponent of the death penalty, but played an important role in arranging the execution (beheading) of King Louis XVI (1793) which led to the establishment of the French Republic.)
