The Global Elite is Insane Revisited
Robert J. Burrowes
Of course, as I explained previously, it is
not just the global elite that is insane. All those individuals – politicians,
businesspeople, academics, corporate media editors and journalists, judges and
lawyers, bureaucrats…. – who serve the elite, including by not exposing and
resisting it, are also insane. And it is important to understand this if we are
to develop and implement effective strategies to resist elite violence,
exploitation and destruction but also avert the now-imminent human extinction
driven by their insane desire for endless personal privilege, corporate profit
and political control whatever the cost to Earth’s biosphere and lifeforms
(human and non-human alike).
But first, who constitutes the global
elite? Essentially, it is those extremely wealthy individuals – notably
including the Rothschild family, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett,
Amancio Ortega, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim, the Walton family and the Koch
brothers – as well as the world’s other billionaires and millionaires. See
‘Bloomberg Billionaires Index’. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/
Testament to their secretly and
long-accumulated wealth and power, a 2012 investigation concluded that rich
individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial
assets – which excludes non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts
and racehorses – in offshore tax havens. See the Tax Justice Network. https://www.taxjustice.net/
If this sum was devoted to programs of
social uplift then starvation, poverty, homelessness and other privations would
vanish immediately and environmental restoration projects as well as research,
development and implementation of visionary sustainability initiatives would
flourish instantly. The idea of an ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ national
economy would vanish from the literature on Africa, Asia and Central/South
America.
In addition to these individuals, however,
the global elite includes the major multinational corporations, particularly
including the following – although, it should be noted, this list simplifies
the picture considerably by ignoring the conglomerate nature of many of these
corporations and not including many of the (more difficult to identify) private
corporations that should be listed in any comprehensive presentation:
* the major weapons manufacturers (such as
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General
Dynamics)
* the major banks (including Industrial
& Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, HSBC Holdings,
JPMorgan Chase, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Bank of America) and their
‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference
* the major investment companies (including
BlackRock, Capital Group Companies, FMR, AXA, and JP Morgan Chase)
* the major financial services companies
(including Berkshire Hathaway, AXA, Allianz and BNP Paribas)
* the major energy corporations including
coal companies (such as Coal India, Adani Enterprises, China Shenhua Energy,
China Coal Energy, Mechel, Exxaro Resources, Public Power, Glencore and Peabody
Energy) as well as the oil and gas corporations (such as Saudi Aramco, Gazprom,
Rosneft, PetroChina, ExxonMobil, Lukoil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras,
Chevron, Novatek, Total S.A. and Eni)
* the major media corporations (including
Alphabet [Google owner], Comcast, Disney, AT&T, News Corporation, Time
Warner, Fox, Facebook, Bertelsmann and Baidu)
* the major marketing and public relations
corporations (including Edelman, W2O Group, APCO Worldwide, Deksia,
BrandTuitive, Fearless Media, and Citizen Group)
* the major agrochemical (pesticides,
seeds, fertilizers) giants (including Bayer, Syngenta, Dow, Monsanto and
DuPont)
* the major pharmaceutical corporations
(including Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi and
GlaxoSmithKline)
* the major biotechnology (genetic
mutilation) corporations (again including Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Pfizer
and Novartis)
* the major mining corporations (including
Glencore Xtrata, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Vale, Anglo American, China Shenhua
Energy, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, and Barrick Gold)
* the major nuclear power corporations
(including Areva, Rosatom, General Electric/Hitachi, Kepco, Mitsubishi, Babcock
& Wilcox, BNFL, Duke Energy, McDermott International, Southern, NextEra
Energy, American Electric Power, and Westinghouse)
* the major food multinationals (including
Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Company [ADM], Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola,
Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods and
Mondelez)
* the major water corporations (including
Veolia, Suez Environnement, ITT Corporation, United Utilities, Severn Trent,
Thames Water, American Water Works).
Of course, the global elite also includes
elite fora where various combinations of elite individuals from the corporate,
political, media and academic worlds gather to plan their continuing violence
against, and exploitation of, the Earth and its inhabitants. This is intended
to consolidate and extend their control over populations, markets and resources
to maximize their privilege, profit and power at the expense of the rest of us
and life generally. Among intergovernmental organizations, it includes the
United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
A quick perusal of the agenda of such elite
gatherings – including the World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/ the Bilderberg Group http://bilderbergmeetings.org/ and the Trilateral Commission http://trilateral.org/ – reveals a comprehensive lack of
interest, despite rhetoric and the occasional token mention, of pressing issues
ranging from the threat of nuclear war and the climate catastrophe to the many
ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, extensive range
of environmental threats and the refugee crisis, each of which they generated
and now continue to deliberately exacerbate. See, for example, the agenda of
the recent WEF meeting in Davos. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/your-day-by-day-guide-to-davos-2018
Primary servants of the global elite
include political leaders in major industrialized countries (who legislate to
progressively expand elite power, profit and privilege, such as Donald Trump’s
recent tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of social programs), the judges
and lawyers (who defend elite power using the elite-designed and manipulated
legal system: ever heard of a wealthy individual convicted in court and given
any serious punishment or of any major corporation genuinely held to legal
account for its exploitation of indigenous peoples or destruction of the
natural environment?), as well as corporate media editors and journalists,
entertainment industry personnel, academics, industry organizations (such as
the European Round Table of Industrialists) that represent the interests of
major corporations, so-called ‘think tanks’ (such as the Council on Foreign
Relations and the Brookings Institution) and ‘philanthropic trusts’ (such as
the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations) all of which justify, ignore or
divert attention from elite violence and exploitation.
Importantly too, primary servants of the
global elite include those who work within elite-directed agencies, notably
including those in the so-called ‘intelligence community’ (such as the US CIA,
British MI6, Russian SVR RF, Chinese Ministry for State Security and Israeli
Mossad), who perform elite functions in relation to spying, surveillance and secret
assassinations (particularly of grassroots activists), ostensibly under the
direction of national governments. But it also includes many lower-level
servants such as those who work as political lobbyists or in the bureaucracy as
well asthe education, police and prison systems.
So why do I claim that the elite and those
who serve them are insane?
Any dictionary will offer a simple
definition of ‘sanity’ along the lines of ‘soundness of judgment or reason’ and
‘the ability to think and speak in a reasonable way and to behave normally’.
But if we use this definition of
sanitythen, obviously, ‘sanity’ must be interpreted to mean that it is ‘sound
judgment, reasonable and normal’ to further perpetrate the violence and
exploitation that are overwhelmingly characteristic of our world. After all,
most people powerlessly accept this incredibly violent state of affairs and, if
they discuss it, do so in terms of its merits, politically, economically,
morally or otherwise. Few people argue, simply, that violence is just insane.
So I would like to propose a more rigorous
definition of sanity: Sanity is the capacity to consider a set of
circumstances, to carefully analyze the evidence pertaining to those
circumstances, to identify the cause of any conflict or problem, and to respond
appropriately, both emotionally and intellectually, to that conflict or problem
with the intention of resolving it, preferably at a higher level of need
satisfaction for all parties (including those of the Earth and all of its living
creatures).
Clearly, my proposed definition of sanity
is designed to imply that any conceptions we have of ‘sound judgment’,
‘reasonable’ and ‘normal’ mean that they are qualities we associate with
individuals who possess the desirable capacity to improve the overall state of
human affairs, whether an interpersonal relationship or geopolitically. This
means, as an absolute minimum, the capacity to reduce violence or exploitation
in one context or another.
You might, of course, accuse me of writing
a definition of ‘sanity’ that serves my agenda to dramatically improve world
order in the direction of peace, justice and sustainability. And you are right!
But whose interest does it serve to have sanity defined as behavior that
involves ‘sound judgment’ and is considered ‘reasonable and normal’ in the
context of perpetuating extraordinary violence?
Alternatively, you might argue that my
definition of insanity is too broad. Surely, you might say, we can account for
many of the behaviors outlined above in terms of different belief systems,
ideologies and religions. Doesn’t a person who believes in killing people to
win wars (or for other reasons) just have a worldview different from those who
believe that people should resolve conflict nonviolently? Doesn’t a capitalist
just have a worldview different from those who believe that people should share
resources equally? Doesn’t a person who believes in the unlimited accumulation
of wealth just have a worldview different from those who believe in ecological
sustainability?
But there is a more fundamental issue here.
As I explained in my original article, cited at the beginning of this one: Do
you really believe that someone who is capable of perpetrating extraordinary
violence, inequity and biosphere-threatening behavior – and thus clearly
incapable of experiencing and expressing the love, compassion, empathy and
sympathy that would drive a nonviolent approach to the world – is sane? Given
that emotional qualities such as love, compassion, empathy and sympathy are an evolutionary
gift to those not seriously damaged during childhood, what happened to those
individuals who do not possess them? See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/
Or, to explain it based on my longer definition
of sanity highlighted above: Casual observation of the state of our world,
including the primary threat of near-term human extinction through climate
catastrophe or nuclear war – see ‘On Track for Extinction: Can Humanity
Survive?’ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48944.htm – clearly reveals that none of the elite
is paying considered attention to the perilous state of our world, analyzing
the evidence in relation to it, identifying the cause(s) driving it or
responding powerfully to end it. Why is this?
In essence, it is because one manifestation
of their insanity drives them to deny reality to make huge profits from weapons
production used to kill people, the burning of climate-destroying fossil fuels,
environmental destruction (through, for example, mining and rainforest
logging), commercial farming based on the poisoning and genetic mutilation of
foods, the mass production and sale of poisoned, processed and nutritionally-depleted
foods, the consumption of health-destroying and dependency-creating drugs, and
control over the sale of water, once considered a human right. Moreover,
insanity makes the elite do everything in its power to maintain this highly
profitable state of affairs. See ‘Profit Maximization is Easy: Invest in
Violence’. http://www.eurasiareview.com/11092017-profit-maximization-is-easy-invest-in-violence-oped/
Moreover, of course, there is no evidence
of committed elite engagement in efforts to end the many local wars (from which
they make huge profits), end corporate exploitation of human beings (which
kills, through starvation alone, 100,000 people every day but from which they
make huge profits) and nonhuman beings (which drives 200 species of life to
extinction daily but from which they make huge profits) or end local
environmental destruction in a myriad ways (from which they make huge profits).
So, in summary, given our ongoing rush to
extinction, it is clear that those who exacerbate this threat through failure
to consider and act with awareness (as well as encourage aware action by
others) fail to satisfy the definition of sanity that I offered above. In
short: Gambling on the future of humanity is not sane.
As an aside, it should be noted: Often
enough too, the elite can rely on a largely insane population to mindlessly
consume the latest consumer product, no matter how unnecessary, or they can
rely on their marketing and advertising agents to persuade those of us who show
the slightest reluctance to buy the latest inanity.
So with an insane global elite and its many
insane servants as well as a largely insane consumer population, what can those
of us who have the sanity to respond powerfully to the many threats to our
survival do?
Well, if you want a child who is
emotionally and intellectually engaged with the worldand therefore capable of
responding powerfully to their circumstances (which includes being able to
resist the lure of serving the elite and being suckered by its marketing), then
terrorizing the child into obedience is not the way to go about it. So, you
might like to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. https://feelingsfirstblog.wordpress.com/my-promise-to-children/
If you are sane enough to investigate the
evidence and to act intelligently and powerfully in response to it, I encourage
you to do so. One option you have if you find the evidence in relation to one
or more of the threats mentioned above compelling, is to join those
participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. http://tinyurl.com/flametree
If you are self-aware enough to know that
you are inclined to avoid ‘difficult issues’ and to take the action that these
require, then perhaps you could tackle this problem at its source by ‘Putting
Feelings First’. https://feelingsfirstblog.wordpress.com/putting-feelings-first/ Unfortunately, as mentioned above, few of
us had a childhood that nurtured our sanity.
If you want to mobilize people to campaign
effectively on the climate, war, rainforest destruction or any other
elite-driven violence that threatens our future, consider developing a
comprehensive nonviolent strategy to do so. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/
And if you want to participate in the
worldwide effort to end the insanity we call violence in all of its
manifestations, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The
People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com
Elite
insanity, if not stopped, will drive us out of existence. If you believe that the elite and their
servants will ‘see the light’ before it is too late, I invite you to seek out
the evidence to justify your belief. I have found none.
I also see no evidence that individual
members of the elite will do the emotional healing necessary to be able to act
sanely in response to the extinction-threatening crisis it has generated.
So it is up to those of us who can think
and act sanely to stop the rush to extinction before it is too late.
Are you one of those people?
3/2018 (2,480
words)
