Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Big_Bird]

Who Rules the World?

Brian Eno:
Nobody. It's much too complicated for that. There are six billion interested parties competing for slices of the control cake ( and that's only the humans), but the world as a whole is such a complex organism that to ask who rules it is like saying "which cell rules the body?", or "which animal rules the jungle?". It's an ecology, stupid.

Of course, power is moving all the time. The nation-state, for example, is having an increasingly hard time deciding what it's for, since many of the problems with which it traditionally dealt are no longer resolvable at national level. The most important big issues are out of the hands of national governments and will increasingly be dealt with at the global level: trade and business, climate change, the use of the sea and other natural resources, technological standardisation, security and cross-border crime. The EU is an example of a response to this: the governments within it cede power to the union because it is calculated to be in everyone's best interests, on average, to coordinate at a transnational level.

Bettany Hughes:
Large corporations and techno-bureaucrats. When modern democracies were founded "the people" were protected against massive concentrations of power. Today the stretch of the new multinationals and their mediators is unparalleled.

But at source the world is ruled by attitude. The market recognises this. "Word of mouth" is still the best seller. The media chases not demographic, but "attitudinal" groups. It is the attitude of a single trader that can bring chaos to the financial markets, it is raw, unmediated attitude that can transmit across the internet to spark terrorism. Attitude is omnipotent. We should be less complacent about what we think.

Peter Tatchell:
Big business and multinational corporations. The big ones - mostly American - have more economic power and political clout than the democratically-elected governments of half the nations of the world.

This immense power is non-transparent, unaccountable and based on economic dictatorship. The political systems of democratic nations involve one-person, one-vote. In contrast, within the global economic system - including the economies of the so-called great democracies - the majority of people have no votes at all. Employees and consumers are economically disenfranchised. All the votes are held by major shareholders, directors and managers. They decide everything. This economic tyranny contradicts the modern democratic ethos.

We've partly won political democracy. Now we need to begin the battle for economic democracy as well.

Sam Duckworth:
From the moment we wake up we are bombarded by marketing, encouraging us to live beyond our means, inspiring us to purchase products we can live without and to aspire to fit a pre-defined stereotype, specifically constructed to make us spend. These same corporations own the world's news sources, allowing them to influence the way we think through the way stories are written (or left unwritten). We then take these views and apply them to our surroundings, living our lives by a competitive capitalist dogma, that encourages us to think selfishly, all whilst the consequences of our selfishness are devastating.

Exploitation, pollution and extreme poverty exist in a world with enough resources to allow everyone to live a good lifestyle. Whether it be our growing relationship with capitalism or the media justification of our living habits, the truth still cannot be hidden. We still rule the world and we're screwing it up.

Camila Batmanghelidjh:
Ancient politics was very reliant on personalities and individuals. However, with the development of information technology, the world is no longer ruled by individuals. The "leader" is viral and more abstract. It's based on emotional and social metamorphosis. The force that is leading us can't be captured or identified within individuals.

Some people, symbolically and momentarily, embody or represent aspects of the leadership momentum, but it's not located in any one place. Contemporary society is fundamentally led by the communication media, who capture themes and reflect them back to us.

Some people are very good at tuning into these abstracts and they have a particular talent for articulating them for the group. Invariably, these personalities assume a public profile because they represent an archetypal space, but they are not necessarily the leaders of those spaces.

Modern leadership is about making visible the viral psychological momentum and the media occupy that space the most. So they are, arguably, the force which rules the world.

John Pilger:
American corporate and state power, assisted by their equivalents in Europe and Asia, certainly aspire to rule the world, and they probably do. At the turn of the millennium, the US Space Command announced that American policy was "full spectrum dominance". They likened this to the European imperial navies' domination of the oceans. Thus "imperialism" was officially returned to common usage, if not to the vocabulary of the "mainstream" media. Of course, imperial rule has been the ambition of US planners since they declared "Manifest Destiny" in the 19th century.

Since 1945, the US has overthrown, directly and indirectly, 50 governments, including democracies, in pursuit of this goal. Looking at the league table, it's clear the Eisenhower and Clinton administrations were the most successful, though the Truman administration deserves special mention for dropping the atomic bombs and casting a permanent nuclear shadow over humanity.

Nitin Sawhney:
Last week Alan Greenspan, America's elder statesman on finance, declared that Bush's prime motive for invading Iraq was oil. When you add this to the fact that three generations of the Bush family and John Kerry all belonged to the same cult/fraternity at Yale university, responsible for grooming many senators, presidents and secretaries of war, and then throw Leo Strauss' influence into the pot, it becomes quite evident that the world is run by very greedy, aggressive and ruthless neocon businessmen.

[Zutronius]

The rich?

[hubba bubba]

[Big_Bird]

Globalisation has undermined democratic governments and awarded hegemony to big business.

[Kuros]

Big Bird, that's an excellent summation of what's happened. I add only one caveat. The global mobility of capital and corporations is a manifestly good thing.

[Gopher]

First, nice series of questions you have posed here, Big_Bird.

Some might entertain the idea, some might even attempt it, but as Eno opines, none could possibly do so.

By the way, this question is posed sensationally, and is too Tears-for-Fearsish. Are we talking about an Ian Fleming novel?

In any case, most actual historical actors and the interests they might represent would like to influence world affairs in their favor, to one degree or another. Few, however, truly aspire "to rule the world" -- the obvious exception notwithstanding...

[CentralCali]

I clicked on UN (hahah) because I just wanted to see the poll results. Nobody rules the world.

[igotthisguitar]

You left out the Vatican (was this what you meant by Satan)?

200 MONKS MURDERED

> From: Miemie
> Sent: Fri 9/28/2007 12:18 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: bludgeoning monks by the 'lone-tein'
>
> We just got phone call with our sister living in Yangon about a few
> hours ago.
>
> We saw on BBC world, saying that 200 monks were arrested. The true picture is far worse!!!!!!!!!
>
> For one instance, the monastery at an obscure neighborhood of
> Yangon,called Ngwe Kyar Yan (on Wei-za-yan-tar Road, Yangon) had been raided early this morning.
>
> A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected
> by the military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks.
> They systematically ordered all the monks to line up and banged and
> crushed each one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One
> by one, the peaceful, non resisting monks, fell to the ground,
> screaming in pain. Then, they tore off the red robes and threw them
> all in the military trucks (like rice bags) and took the bodies away.
>
> The head monk of the monastery, was tied up in the middle of the
> monastery, tortured , bludgeoned, and later died the same day, today.

> Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the monastery, warded off by troops with bayoneted rifles,
unable to help their helpless monks being slaughtered inside the monastery. Their every try to forge
> ahead was met with the bayonets.
>
> When all is done, only 10 out of 200 remained alive, hiding in the
> monastery. Blood stained everywhere on the walls and floors of the
> monastery.
>
> Please tell your audience of the full extent of the fate of the monks
> please please !!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> 'Arrested' is not enough expression. They have been bludgeoned to death !!!!!!
>
> Aye Aye
>
> Hong Kong

[igotthisguitar]

International Narcotics Agenda Behind Myanmar Instability
2007 09 30

By Larry Chin | onlinejournal.com


For the past month, the military government of Myanmar has been the focus of increasingly strident demonstrations, resulting in violent military crackdowns in recent days. What must be noted is the Bush administration's open support for the dissidents, in conjunction with growing international (Western) support behind a coup attempt, and the likely parapolitical goals behind this agenda.

The demise of the Golden Triangle: bad for business
According to a report by Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune, the Golden Triangle has, in recent years, lost its prominence as a narco-region. In fact, the legendary Triangle now accounts for as little as 5 percent of world opium supply, according to some estimates. [Notorious Golden Triangle loses sway in opium trade, Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, September 11, 2007]

Not surprisingly, the Golden Crescent and Afghanistan now under control of the US and its drug-intelligence proxies, are by far and away the world�s number one opium suppliers, as well as the top overall drug producing region, dwarfing Colombia and the Golden Triangle.

In fact, the demise of the Golden Triangle in recent years can be traced to geostrategic developments that run counter to the agenda of international interests whose financial and banking system depends on the multi-billion dollar cash flows of the criminal drug trade

As noted by Fuller:

1. The United Nations credits Myanmar�s central government for leading opium eradication.

2. Militias with long-standing ties to the heroin business have also pushed eradication.

3. China has played a major role pressing opium growers to eradicate.

4. The Laotian government has led its own opium eradication campaign. Officials see the link between poverty and opium, and the fact that �it is mostly organized crime syndicates that profit.�

These narco-developments, parallel with 1) other financial and political reasons why a new Mynamar government would be preferred; 2) a fragile and teetering world economy facing numerous financial bubbles and insolvency; and 3) continued failure to control either the Middle East or contain the rising political and economic power of China, cast a different light on the sudden burst of interest on the part of the Bush administration to back a coup or regime change in Myanmar.

The Bush administration, the epitome of criminal political power, does not support �human rights.� It will utilize every means, including overt military force, to protect geostrategic interests that depend on the world drug trade.

The revitalization of the Golden Triangle drug trade, and the installation or support for an openly pro-US regime in Myanmar, benefits Western financial interests. Any geostrategic foothold in Southeast Asia also benefits efforts to contain China.

Copyright � 1998-2007 Online Journal

Article from: http://onlinejournal.com/artman
/publish/article_2473.shtml

Related: Bread and Butter Issues behind Myanmar Protests
Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia)
Notorious Golden Triangle loses sway in the opium trade
Bush at the UN: a war criminal lectures the world on �human rights�

[igotthisguitar]

http://iamthewitness.com/Protocols.in.Modern.English.htm

The Book The Church Doesn't Want You To Read
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lRuxCofh6xs&mode=related&search=

[SPINOZA]

If I was in the pub and having a chat, I think my answer would be the European Union and the United States, with a combined population of only 12% of the world, yet a combined GDP of 57.5% of world GDP. They've 795 million (generally very wealthy) people to whom Asian electrical product exports and others are reliant.

I want to scrutinize what those folks have said, mind you.