John Perkins: The Shadow World Of The Economic Hitman

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OK. 

If you don't like having your tallest buildings in downtown Manhattan blown up (while still full of several thousand people) or bombs exploded in your train stations, then you'll want to be really clear on how this works and who is doing it.
Or,
A centrally controlled monetary system that, by its design, shifts wealth from one group to another.
Or,
International banking cartel that extracts resources through issuing debt beyond what can ever be repaid.
Now I really need to go out and work in the garden before I am overwhelmed by a sense of darkness in the world. :-)  So I actually do understand very well why we need to return to something good and beautiful to nurture our souls.

 

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Thank you for expressing that sentiment so clearly.  
While the "conspiracy theorists" on this site do make some valid points, they have become so pervasive and overwhelming here that I find myself visiting less and less.  And that saddens me because there is so much valuable information here.  I just get tired of constantly wading through the **** to get there.

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In the spirit of trying to make a positive contribution, rather than just criticizing others, I offer this:
There is a wonderful organic gardening/alternative agriculture seminar going on this week that be accessed for free at www.homegrownfoodsummit.com

Enjoy!

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The attacks are disturbing and unpleasant.

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SP-
That's three well chosen examples of stuff we should keep an eye on.

I like the way Catherine Austin Fitts talks about all of this.  Her goal is to get her clients to understand how (she believes that) the world works.  From the way she talks, she sees every story you talk about, but her goal is not to spur people to tilt against the windmills of the world.  That would only get them killed.

No, her goal is to make it so her clients can create lives of meaning while staying out of the way of the machine, avoid falling into the pits, and understand about the black budget and all it implies for each of our lives.  And then go about creating meaningful lives - whatever that means for them individually.

In my small way I'm trying to do the same thing in my little corner.  When I advise people to avoid the news, watch prices, and remain relatively detached - the gang in charge of "financial entertainment TV" wants you listening to the news, and wants you in an emotional state, preferably fearful or greedy, so they can get you to sell your stuff at the lows (OIL GLUT OIL GLUT) so they can buy it up cheap, and then sell it back to you once prices have gone up, rinse-repeat.  Fear and greed are the tools of control in wall street.

(Swing high today in XLE; you've seen the wash cycle, now here comes the rinse, most likely)

But I say, there's no need to get angry, or protest, or blow up the world - just understand how it works, so they can't trick you.  Once you know the trick, it stops working on you, and they lose all their power.  There's no need to fear either.  If they were all powerful, they wouldn't need to resort to these sorts of tricks - tricks are a mark of weakness, not strength.

Myself I'm glad for the intro on the whole WTC-7, and the background on neocon agendas and where it might have come for, but being a busy executive (!), the "executive summary" was sufficient.  I feel appropriately armed now and I have a proper lens through which I can view all this mid-east activity.  As with everything else, I don't feel well-served by getting angry about it - I just want things clear in my mind, so I can sort through how I might act if I ever had an opportunity to do anything about it.

My desire to avoid anger about these things is somewhat personal.  My mother was quite angry at all these events you talk about.  She took all this stuff very personally.  Two years ago she died of cancer that I'm convinced came at least in part because of her great unhappiness with how the world was going.  And in the end, the anger she could not let go of ended up hurting her and our family, and nobody else.

So…no anger for me.  Its just not helpful.  People think it is, but it isn't.  At least not from what I've seen.

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How long does it take to mobilize an army, and begin a war? three months?
Because back when Kabila conquered Congo and renamed it zaire, it took a few years before the hitmen showed up, and quietly asked Kabila to “resume” IMF stabilization payments.
Kabila’s answer was that the payments and Mobutu were both in France. Note further that “stabilization” had failed, and Kabila also pointed out that there was no longer a Zaire: the country was now Congo.
That was not the set of points that the IMF wanted to hear. Within three months there was an army, with an insurrection, with one of the main generals being the son of the IMFs representative to Congo.
Then ran a long, multi-year war of attritition to wear Zaire down. Apparently famile and disease wasn’t enough in the opinion of the IMF.
Eventually, Kabila asked to “resume” payments on mobutu’s loot. Within three months, the insurrection army vanished.
Then Kabila was assassinated, to help seal the deal.
If there is an international court of justice, the IMF needs to be tried and convicted. I won’t ask for them to swing, but life on Elba would be oh so appropriate. I woud expect it to be at least as crowded as Monaco.

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Michael - a couple of books popped into my mind as I read your post.
I read these in conjunction with each other a few years ago and they fit well together.

'The Great Food Robbery'  Published by Pambazuka Press/GRAIN

'Profit over People' by Chomsky

Eye opening for anyone who still thinks the IMF is a benign institution which helps poor countries out.

 

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While I think this specific interview was great, and that Perkins' suggestions for working towards change in an emotionally-sustainable and joyous manner is excellent advice, nigel's point about the evolution over time from the original Crash Course to the increase in focus on conspiracies at PP more recently has also been made by JTWalsh and others.
We have also had a similar conversation about the place that climate change should take at PP, and climate change is arguably is the keystone limit to growth within the third E, whereas there is really no part of the core ideas of the Crash Course or PP's mission statement that involve geopolitical analysis, whether mainstream or alternative.

Here is Chris on why he chose to keep climate change out of the original conception of Environment in the Crash Course. (From the thread following his interview with Mark.)  Most of the bold is mine.

Is a deep understanding of the deep state core to PP's mission?  More specifically, do discussions of whether or not a certain ethnic group controls American media, government and military attract more people to PP than they repel?

If taking a pragmatic, cost-benefit approach towards the inclusion or exclusion of climate change as a focus for Chris in his analysis of the three E's and practical responses, is it reasonable to use the same criteria when deciding to what extent we focus on 9/11, the deep state, Israel, and the Jews?

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Nigel, you said that the Peak Prosperity crash cource was a masters work in simplicity and accuracy.
Not so.
The peak prosperity crash course was very explicit that oil could not fall as far as fifty dollars a barrel. In fact, it has fallen to half that.
Chris Martenson quite accurately DID acknowledoge that he had not understood what the effects of deflation would do. But I would contend that it is indicative that it was NOT a masters work in simplicity and accuracy.
The crash course also modeled exponential growth, which IS accurate in demonstrating that the economy cannot always grow, but is NOT accurate in describing the coming crashes.
I noted early on in the growth of conspiracy discussion, that this was being led BY confirmation bias, in light of the inaccuracies of the model. (my nete is in the discussion of the crash course forum).
I noted further that if we wanted to avoid the conspiracy theories overtaking the website, we needed to work on our models. My idea here is that if you don’t approach the difficult but positive changes, you don’t wind up in the cyclic but useless changes.
I offer my point again: if we want to avoid pointless wasted energy of conspiracy screaming, we need to start fiixing our models.
(BTW: I too, like Dave, do think the conspiracies happen. I just don’t think it’s a valid use of my time.)

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This has been a long time discussion here at PP.  Being able to see the world, "as it is" is a complex process that involves both intellectual capacity as well as a "spiritual" practice.  Some of those who have the strongest spiritual practices would not identify themselves as spiritual at all, so integrated and wholesome (holistic) is there world view.
But everything we do effects everything in the world.  The thoughts we think, the toothpaste we buy, we what we spend our free time reading or viewing, what we do for a living, how we interact with family and friends.  All things contain everything within them.  Every act and thought is political, economic, social, spiritual, and ecological whether we are aware of it or not.

There are those who spend time, writing, thinking, about politics who's net effect may be completely antithetical to the views they are expressing because they are so unconscious.  That is where they may happen to be on their path for whatever reason.  Each of us takes on as much "reality" as we are capable at any give time.  If we attempt to take on to much "reality" before we have the capacity to do so, we only burn ourselves out and may even become destructive to ourselves and others, Dave F shared a personally painful story that made that point abundantly clear.

If our own sense of being is developed through identification with various human constructs like nationality, social groups, political concepts, class status, etc. our ability to "see" will be proportionally restricted.  The deeper we are connected to a deeper reality, the more detached and objective we can become regarding various human constructs.  Political arguments (or any argument that is not holistic) become ineffective unless it triggers all associated connections that allow us to shift to a broader reality.

If we live in a way that creates a world worth inheriting, we may doing much more than those who are "politically" "active" in stopping the evil that the TPTB are perpetrating.

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Good thoughts Treebeard…If I had to choose between the two it would be spirituality, but I don't see them as mutually exclusive. I try to be politically active in the sense of doing my civic duty, while at the same time trying to live in a way "that creates a world worth inheriting".

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DaveF,  I very much appreciate your efforts to open your heart with your story about your mother, her psychology and the impact that had on you.  When someone voluntarily reveals his or her heart, our understanding of them goes deeper than just their ideas.
My personal history contains the roots of my fixation on 9/11 and the deep state.  I’ll offer it here:

My mom would be described as having a narcissistic personality disorder.  Everything was about her and every other human being only existed to reflect on her.  If we got a good grade on a school paper, it was all about what a great person she was and if we got detention is was all about her personal humiliation. 

Mom needed to dominate every situation—to be the “top dog”–occasionally with physical violence, mostly with scowls and fury.

Yet she was a high standing member of her church, pious, “better-than-thou.”  The net effect was that she was a “Christian Nazi,” moral on the outside and sometimes cruel / abusive in private.  We kids would watch her inner mood-currents for indicators of danger.  The surface postures meant little, we watched the deep mood-currents with our intuition and trusted what we saw ourselves.

When I was in the 5rd grade I got a book about Adolf Hitler’s life (written for children).  I was absolutely fascinated and yearned to understand how this worked.  It told the story of his childhood, foster homes, and schizophrenic aunt and moved to his ascendance to power, the holocaust, racial superiority beliefs and the execution of those with disabilities and psychiatric disease.  I remember lying in my bedroom reading about Adolf sensing a of a dark cloud of “evilness.”  I knew that there would be no relief from avoidance—it was real.  (It felt a lot like my house!)  I had to understand.  I “leaned into it” seeking understanding. 

After 9/11, I felt this same sense of “evilness” settling in on the world.  Now the entire world was “the battlefield,” every human being can be a “suspected terrorist,” bombing was without borders, war declaration or even publicly vetted evidence, and murder and imprisonment of everyone, foreign and domestic, without due process, was legally enabled.  Cruel treatment suddenly was OK.  We were descending into hell.  The transformation feels qualitatively like the Nazi’s.  (“Nazi” = RED/BLUE.)

My sense was that we were descending into hell.  I had to know how this worked.

My current frame is something that Ken Wilbur warned about:  Low cognitive/spiritual developmental levels of RED/BLUE gain control of technologies for war, communication and surveillance, technologies normally developed by societies centered in the higher levels.

So my sense is that this perceived “evilness” is a cognitive / spiritual evolution issue, the slipping of social control into the hands of a less developed RED/BLUE faction.

To finish with a very positive note:  The movie "Remember The Titans” with Denzel Washington, a story of a southern HS football team struggling to emerge from racial segregation in order to produce a champion football team.  This was an archetypal BLUE to ORANGE (and into GREEN) transformation myth.

 

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Is a deep understanding of the deep state core to PP's mission?  More specifically, do discussions of whether or not a certain ethnic group controls American media, government and military attract more people to PP than they repel?

If taking a pragmatic, cost-benefit approach towards the inclusion or exclusion of climate change as a focus for Chris in his analysis of the three E's and practical responses, is it reasonable to use the same criteria when deciding to what extent we focus on 9/11, the deep state, Israel, and the Jews?

Hugh... Chris has engaged on this topic of building 7.  If the core mission here is helping to create a world worth inheriting... I will say for sure that some of us feel that exposing the deep state for what it is.. factually, is of great importance.  We can't deal with them/it, both on political, and spiritual terms, until we face the reality of it. 

Front page on ZH right now…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-08/do-you-remember-five-men-being-arrested-nypd-9-11-filming-and-celebrating-attack

There are many conspiracy theories surrounding 9-11, but this article focuses on just one conspiracy fact. The FBI released the, "Five Dancing Israelis," that were arrested by the NYPD on 9-11 for filming and celebrating the attacks on the WTC and driving around in a van that tested positive for explosives.  These were admitted Mossad agents working undercover in the USA.

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I could not have said it better.

To the credit of the opposing view point, I have to freely acknowledge that a great case has been put that understanding of the darker issues of our culture is necessary. That we can change behaviors and that we as a culture need truth seekers of some sort. I used to think I was one, but I've seen too much and it has become a destructive force in my life.

If I could offer one suggestion to all, for every investigation into something that is by it's nature upsetting, that you balance it with something else. Play with the kittens, puppies and horses. Watch the stars. Swim in the river. Have a beer with your friends. Laugh with your family. Achieve something that will endure.

Thank you for the polite comments, I have enjoyed reading this thread.

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Uncomfortable with the subject matter of the Neocon thread but apparently unable to rebut any of the material presented, HughK, you now want to kick over the chess board?
Yep, that would be contolling the dialogue, aka gatekeeping. A tried and tested means of warding off challenges to the official narrative, whatever the topic. We already have the MSM doing that for that us.

 

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To the credit of the opposing view point, I have to freely acknowledge that a great case has been put that understanding of the darker issues of our culture is necessary. That we can change behaviors and that we as a culture need truth seekers of some sort. I used to think I was one, but I've seen too much and it has become a destructive force in my life.
I fully understand this.. thank you so much for both acknowledging those of us who feel the need to don the armor and take up the sword (pen) ... and for explaining your own feelings in more depth.  I send you a bear hug.  Jim     

 

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My first exposure to the 9/11 "conspiracies" discussion was a comment by Chris at PP before I became a dues paying member. It really threw me for a loop. I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of such a heinous act being perpetrated by the "good guys" who run the US government, these sorts of things only happened in other countries.  But I kept coming back and reading more from the site and the intelligent comments around that subject that over time, (6 months) convinced me to read up on the subject which led me to the conclusion that there is substantial merit in the 9/11 "truther" point of view regarding the facts vs. the 9/11 Commission report. The question of who is responsible for "allowing" this to happen in the first place and then covering it up is an important topic in my opinion because it expands the realm of possible other harms that could befall us citizens as a result of official policy. As we have seen in the wake of 9/11 these events have been used to scare the population into surrendering our few remaining liberties to the boogeyman of terrorism so the government could be expanded exponentially "for our protection". Inquiry into this matter leads me to look at how this could have occurred if our government is in fact by the people and for the people, US citizens shouldn't be used by their own government as props in a false flag operation that has been cited as the reason for legislation subjugating them in a new Orwellian reality. Getting to how this subject is pertinent to the discussion of this thread, the "neocons" have been in prominent, if not dominant executive branch decision making positions since at least the GHW Bush presidency, gaining more influence in subsequent administrations. They are therefore a worthy target of inquiry as to what their motivations might be for using false flag events to gain advantage. What might their future plans be for us?  A discussion of who they are and their possible connection to a deep state is important because if they are as powerful as they appear to be they hold very influential power to directly affect all three "E's", as well as climate change. I don't get that sand_puppy is coming from biased ethnic prejudice, he is merely following where the evidence is leading. Cui bono? I find repeated attempts to derail the discussion to be more suspect than any of sand-puppy's minor missteps and I applaud his efforts to shed light on this very important topic.  
Tim                    

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Fortunately or unfortunately we don't get to choose whether we are going to be political or spiritual, because all actions (and even inaction) are always both. Not only can we do both, but we are always doing both all the time.  It is only the awareness of what we are doing that shifts.  We have fewer choices than we imagine.  Our best hope is to make our "choices" consciously.
By sharing the values and quality of awareness of those committed the acts of 9/11, you are supporting them regardless of what one my say, type, write or even do.  We may see what happened on that day as unbelievable evil in action, but those organizing and putting all that in motion believed that they were moral and justified in their actions, their ends justified their means.  What was wrong with their thinking, what was wrong with their consciousness, those are the essential questions, not how they managed to manipulate the media, organize the controlled demolition, who participated, how and why.  Otherwise we will replace them when and if they are caught and the madness will continue.

Plant your garden, but what and how you plant supports the truth or the lies of 9/11.

 

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Dave
I'm a couple of days behind the play so was going to PM you. But what the heck, lets get it it out there. To me this was one of the most insightful and well written comments I've seen here in the last 6 years.

Which is not to say I don't agree with SP, mememonkey, Jim and others. I find the deep state subjects fascinating and centrally important to our predicament.  The key, I believe, is how and where we CHOOSE to focus our attention. If the process is unconscious and automatic we can become ensnared in all manner of unpleasantness. When the process is largely conscious  we can choose to explore 'unsatisfactory' situations without becoming swept away.

As you say what we focus on tends to expand into our lives - and this is not magical thinking (which I'm allergic to). To put it simply the content of our consciousness is the content of our life. Once again, well said Dave.

Shit I seem to be agreeing with pretty much everyone on this thread. Where have all those damn trolls gone? :wink: