The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. Alex Carey
When Arbenz became President in Guatemala, the country was very much under the control of the United Fruit Company and big international corporations. And Arbenz ran on this ticket that says we want to give the land back to the people, and when he was in power he began to implement policies that would do just that, give land rights back to the people. The United Fruit company didn’t like that very much, so they hired a public relations firm and launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince people ... that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, and if we allowed him to stay in power, the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere ... Out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the Military to take this man out. And in fact we did. We sent in planes. We sent in soldiers. We sent in jackals. We sent everything in to take him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, including the United Fruit. John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, economist for Chas T Main Inc
Reagan ... was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy ... He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government – men like Vice President George H W Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a US military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire. ibid.
Iraq [2003] actually is a perfect example of the way the whole system works. So we economic hit-men are the first line of defense. We go in and try to corrupt governments, and get them to accept these huge loans which we then use as leverage to basically own them. If we fail, as I failed ... with men who refuse to be corrupted, then the second line of defense is we send in the jackals. And the jackals either overthrow governments or they assassinate. And once that happens, when the new government comes in, boy, it’s going to tow the line because the new president knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t. And in the case of Iraq, both of those things failed. The economic hit-men were not able to get through to Saddam Hussein; we tried very hard, we tried to get him to accept a deal very similar to what the House of Saud had accepted in Saudi Arabia, but he wouldn’t accept it. And so the jackals went in to take him out. They couldn’t do it. His security was very good. After all, he had one time worked for the CIA; he’d been hired to assassinate a former president of Iraq, and failed. But he knew the system. So in ’91 we send in the troops. And we take out the Iraqi military. So we assume at that point that Saddam Hussein is going to come around. We could have taken him out, of course, at that time, but we didn’t want to, he’s a kind of strong man we like; he controls his people; we thought he could control the Kurds, and keep the Iranians in their border, and keep pumping oil for us, and that once we took out his military, now he’s going to come around. So the economic hit-men go back in in the ’90s without success. If they’d had success, he’d still be running the country. We’d be selling him all the fighter jets he wants and everything else he wants, but they couldn’t. They didn’t have success. The jackals couldn’t take him out again. So we sent the military in once again, and this time we did the complete job – we took him out, and in the process created for ourselves some very very lucrative construction deals and to reconstruct a country that we’d essentially destroyed, which is a pretty good deal if you own construction companies [Halliburton], big ones. So Iraq shows the three stages – the economic hit-men failed there, the jackals failed there and as a final measure the military goes in. And in that way we really created an empire; but we’ve done it very very subtly; it’s clandestine. All the empires of the past were built by the military. And everyone knew they were building them ... The majority of the people in the United States had no idea that we’re living off the benefits of a clandestine empire. Today there’s more slavery in the world than ever before. Then you have to ask yourself, well, if it’s an empire, then who is the emperor? ... The Corporatocracy. ibid.
For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites. Cornel West
With unfailing consistency US intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, US leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests. Michael Parenti
Throughout much of its history the AFL-CIO and other US labor organizations have worked with CIA and multinational corporations to overthrow democratically-elected governments, collaborated with dictators against progressive labour movements, supported reactionary labor movements against progressive governments, worked with corporate America to organize racist and protectionist campaigns against foreign countries, and encouraged racist campaigns against immigrant workers. Lee Siu Hin
In the middle of the war Microsoft, DHL and other corporations invited Halliburton to a conference to figure out how much money could be made in Iraq. Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004
In the corporate world sometimes things aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures. George W Bush
American corporations stand to win a huge amount of money in the current reconstruction process in Iraq. And many of those people and corporations have very close ties to the administration. Many contracts so far were given without any bidding process going on. Erik Leaver, Centre for Policy Studies Washington
New World Order: The New World Order has nothing at all to do with a political government; the New World Order is the establishment of a global corporation. Ian R Crane, interview ‘Global Control’, Richplanet TV 2012
Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: international banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, The Technetronic Era 1971
The Illuminati control most of the world’s corporations. They are collectively destroying the biodiversity of planet Earth, hurling mankind into a permanent state of fear. Disconnecting us from the knowledge of our higher spiritual self. Chris Everard, Spirit World I
The 10 largest antitrust law firms in the United States have gone into the federal courts charging Monsanto with creating a global conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws, to control the global market in seeds. Jeremy Rifkin
Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up. Dana Spiotta
Valhalla, Mr Beale. Please sit down. You have meddled with the primal forces of Nature, Mr Beale. And I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow. Tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system out of systems. One vast and immune interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of Dollars. Petro Dollars. Electro Dollars. Multi dollars. Reichmarks. Rins, Rubles, Pounds and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of Nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr Beal? You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and Democracy. There is no America. There is no Democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beal. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beal. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that perfect world in which there in no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common purpose. In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquillized. All boredom amused. Network 1976 Network starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Arthur Burghardt, director Sidney Lumet, Jensen to Beale
I will tell you what they are buying CCA for – they are buying it for the Saudi Arabian investment corporation. They are buying it for the Arabs ... We all know that the Arabs control $16 billion in this country. They own a chunk of Fifth Avenue, twenty downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the port of New Orleans, an industrial park in Salt Lake City, they own big hunks of the Atlanta Hilton, the Arizona Land & Cattle Company, the Security National Bank in California, the Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit ... And that’s only what we know about ... The Arabs are simply buying us. There’s only one thing can stop them – you. You. ibid.
Why would major corporations ... fail to report on the detrimental activities of the Federal Reserve system? James Jaeger, Fiat Empire: Why the Federal Reserve Violates the US Constitution
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. Helen Keller