Tools of Control Part One

Tools of Control

A Book about How Four Growing Institutions Control Us and How We Can Fight Them for Justice, Freedom, Autonomy, Sustainability, Biodiversity, and Human and Ecological Well-being.

Adam S. Goldstein

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Index

A Short Note to the Reader about the Origins of this book…………………………………….(3-6)

Part One: Introduction

1 Tools of Control………………………………………………………………….(11-12)
2 Governments…………………..…………………………………………..……(13-25)
3 Billion Dollar, Transnational Corporations…………..………..……………..….(26-28)
4 The Corporate News Media……….……….……………………………………(29-33)
5 Religion: The Fourth and Most Unique Influence………………………………(34-43)

Part Two: A Brief History of Money, Government, Religion, and Science and Why They Evolved

1 The Conception of Tools, Money, Agriculture, Government, and Religion……
2 Fiat Currency Today, Education and the Division of Labor ……………………….
3 The Development of Religious Thought and Behavior……..………………………
4 Organized Religion…………………..………………..………………………..
5 Abrahamic Religions…………………………………………………….……..
6 A Brief History of Palestine and Israel, the Ongoing Occupation of Palestine, and the Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Racist Israeli Government……………..
7 Abrahamic Texts………………………………………………………………..
8 Immorality, Violence, Myth, and Contradictions in Religious Texts and Communities……………………………………………………………………………………………….
9 Religion, Sex, Contraception, Abortion, Homosexuality, Marriage, Puritanism, and Rape by Clergy……………………………………………………………………………………………
10 The “Problem of Evil”………………………………………………………
11 The Birth and Development of Science and Religion’s Effect on its Progress………………………………..…………………………………………
12 The Crusades and Science After the Middle Ages…….………………………
13 Religion’s Effect on Recent History and Education in the Presence of Scientific Knowledge………………………………………………………………………….
14 Scientific Knowledge, Copyright Laws, and Their Effect on the Spread of Authoritarianism………………………………………………………………………………………….
15 Colonialism in Antiquity and the Road to Modern Imperialism….………….…

Part Three: The Birth of Modern Corporations, Banks, Growing Economic Inequality, and Their Effects on the Natural World

1 Corporations and Imperialism…………………………………………….……
2 The Rise of Corporate Executives and Bankers in America…………………….
3 The Corporate Takeover and the Destruction of the Working Class in America Via Bailouts, Tax Breaks for the Rich, and Corporate Executives Hired to Regulate Themselves In Government…………………………………………………………………………..
4 Global Warming, Greenwashing, Ecocide, the Corporate State Role, Environmental “Nonprofits”, and Sustainable Solutions…………………………………………………………
5 The TPP, TTIP, TiSA, CETA, and other “Free trade” disasters…………………….
6 The Scam of Billion Dollar “Lending” and Debt Slavery Disguised As “Humanitarian Aid” and “Development” by International Financial Institutions…………………………
7 The Richest of the Rich………………………………………………..………..
8 The Stock Exchange: A Rigged Casino……………………………..………….
9 The Poorest of the Poor, Their Health, and Spending on Life-Saving Resources and Services Versus Military Spending………………………………………………………………….

Part Four: The Evolution of Electronic, Corporate Media, Advertising, Propaganda, and Their Effects on Humanity

1 Developing Propaganda and Feeding Consumerism……………………………..
2 The Inventions of the Telephone and Television, their impact on Culture, and the Development of the Counterculture in America………………………………………..
3 The Counterculture, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Women’s Movement of the 1960s …………………………………………………………………………………………………….
4 The Civil Rights Movement, State Collusion with The Klan, the Futility of Nonviolent Protest Alone, a Brief History of Gun Control, the Racism of Both Political Parties, and the Necessity of Armed Resistance………
5 News Media Biases, Advertising, Telecommunications, and Their Sociological Effects…………………………………………………………………………………
6 Media Manipulation and Patenting Life…….……………………………….

Part Five: The Selective Drug War, Incarceration, and Involuntary Hospitalization: Three More Means of Social and Economic Control

1 Gentrification…………………………………………………………………
2 The Real Reason for the Selective Criminalization of Drugs….………………
3 Drugs and Terrorism………………………………….………………….…..
4 Analyzing the Current, Illicit Opium and Cocaine Markets, US Government Protection and Distribution, and the Correlation Between GDP, Smuggling Routes, Drug laws, and Addiction………………………………………………………………………………
5 Analyzing and Understanding the Licit Opium Market and the Most Abused Substance on Earth……………..…………………..………………………….….
6 A Brief History of the Criminalization of Cannabis in the United States …..…………………………………………………………………………………….
7 Cannabis and its Efficacy as a Medicine……………………………………..
8 Legalizing Drugs in a Responsible Way……………………………………..
9 Reforming Rehabilitation Programs like the “Twelve Steps”…………………
10 The Profits and Racism of Prison Slave Labor, Private Prisons, and the Corporations Cashing In………………………………………………………………………………………………..
11 Rape in Prison, the Mentally Troubled Locked Up, and the Social Consequences of Prisons………………………..………………………………………………………………………….
12 The Mental Health Industry and Involuntary Commitment..…………………
13 The Rosenhan Experiment…..………………………………………………
14 Psychiatric Medication, Overmedication, and Holistic Alternatives………..
15 Rethinking Normality, Insanity, and Mental Wellness………….…………..
16 Questioning the Distinction Between Acceptable and Unacceptable Forms of Violence ……..……………..………………………………………..………….
17 Abolishing the Insanity Defense and Creating Alternative Criminal Defenses………………………………………………………………………………………..……
18 Bipolar Disorder, ADD, Schizophrenia, Childhood Psychiatry and Antipsychotics…………………………………………………………..……….
19 Rethinking Mental Disorders, Brain Diseases, their Relationship with Bodily Diseases, and For-Profit Psychiatry………………………………………….……………
20 Crime, Punishment, and Grand Juries,…………………………………………………..
21“I Feared For My Life” and Other Excuses Cops and the FBI Use to Get Away With Murder, Terrorism, and Entrapment…………………………………………………………………………
22 Larger Wars………………………………………………………………………

Part Six: Global Wars for Capitalism and Corporations and the Fight against “Communism”

1 Collective Ownership, Worker’s Control, Unions, Autonomy, Anarchism, Communism, the Spanish Revolution, and their Suppression by Capitalist Empires……………………
2 A Brief Explanation of State Socialism, Libertarian Socialism, Anarchism, and Communism, and Why They Were Redefined by Capitalist Empires……………..
3 The Deception and Brutality of the Soviet Union and the US Government, and Their Persecution of Anarchists, Dissidents, and Libertarian Socialists and communists…….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
4 The Korean War………………………………………………………………
5 The Vietnam War……………………………………………………..………
6 The CIA, its Devotion to American Corporations, Profit, State Capitalism, and Crushing Socialism: From Operation PBFORTUNE to Operation Ajax to Operation Condor to the Bay of Pigs…………………………………………………………………….…..
7 Oil Wars……………………………………………………………….……..
8 The Iran-Contra Affair…………………………….…………………………
9 The Persian Gulf War and the Following Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq………………………………………………………………………………..
10 Governments, War, Murder, Terrorism, Euphemisms in Corporate State Propaganda, and Double Standards…………………………………………………………….
11 The Privatization of War and the Military and Black Site Prisons …………

Part Seven: Solutions

1 Destruction of What’s Destroying Us…………………………………..……………….
2 Taking Back the Stolen Wealth of the World….…..…….………………….
3 Rewilding, Reorganizing, and Rebuilding From the Bottom Up For Human and Ecological Needs.
4 What Can We Do Individually?………………………………….………..….
5 Final Words………………………………………………………..…………
A Short List of Charities, Free Services and Resources…………………………..
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Citations……………………………………………..……………………………

(Part One)

Introduction

1.1 Tools of Control

Ecosystems exist in equilibrium. While nature can be cruel, there are more symbiotic and cyclical relationships than parasitical ones. We breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants and trees sequester the carbon from the C02 we exhale and free up the two oxygen atoms in each CO2 molecule for us to breathe. We eat plants; they consume the nutrients in our waste broken down by fungi, worms, insects, and aerobic bacteria. A similar biogeochemical process occurs with nitrogen through nitrogen fixation, nitrification, denitrification, decay and putrefaction. These cycles allow different life forms to continually recycle nutrients and thrive.

Our ancestors used to live within this equilibrium until civilization developed. Slowly, as humans spread across the globe, our means of hunting became more sophisticated, and so too did our means of killing other people, eventually leading to the development of nation states, which plundered, enslaved, and mass murdered their way into dominance.

The human population exploded in the 20^th century and continues to do so in the 21^st century at increasingly unsustainable rates. As of 2024, there are roughly 250,000 more births than deaths each day. Earth, of course, has a finite number of resources and yet we extract the ones that can never be replaced with little regard for the consequences, and we don’t properly recycle renewable resources, ignoring these natural, aforementioned cycles. This is evident in much of our manufacturing, mining, timber, agriculture, energy, and weapons industries, resulting in pollution and death on a massive scale. The Holocene extinction event caused by humans has killed half of all species on the planet and an estimated three trillion trees. Our planet is polluted, its climate rapidly warming, and ice caps melting. We are told this is the only way the economy can grow, and the health of our economy is said to be integral to our survival. Ironically, this extractive way of living is killing us. An estimated ten million people die from the impacts of air pollution alone.[1] Only the ruling class receives significant financial benefit from our extractive economy while insulating itself from most of the harm it does.

Today, the discrepancy between the rich and the poor has never been greater. A report by Oxfam published in February 2017 showed that the eight richest men on Earth own as much as the poorest half of humanity.[2] 80 percent of the world lives on less than $10 a day, [3] and poverty is by far the most common preventable cause of death, disease, and general poor quality of life. The rich travel in fossil fuel powered private jets and helicopters to their million-dollar luxury homes while poor children of the world unlucky enough to be born in a region where rich states want something are blown apart by missile and gun fire in regions like Gaza, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Indigenous communities that act as stewards of the land in biodiversity hotspots such as the Amazon rainforest are driven off their land so it can be logged, mined, polluted and destroyed in the name of “economic progress”. Innocent people suffer torture and slavery in greater numbers than ever in history while governments pat themselves on the backs for bringing “democracy” and “freedom” to the third world.

Some blame “human nature” but the true causes of these kinds of cruelties are not so esoteric. Humans evolved long before these inequities spread and they don’t exist in nature. People are not born hating another race of people or believing the poor to be inferior. The ruling class indoctrinates the public to justify the inequities of their own making to divert blame away from themselves and their powerful institutions. These institutions have become more powerful than the ruling class itself. As many of us have become reliant on their infrastructure to survive, we see no other way of living.

Nation states have worked hand in glove with hierarchical religious institutions and theocracies for thousands of years as missionaries claiming to bring “civility” and “God” slaughtered and enslaved millions. The first joint-stock companies invented in the Middle Ages, were investments in colonial conquests financed by powerful governments. In England they had royal charters and managers with political power and investors who bought shares of the colony. The British East India Company, one of the first modern transnational corporations, laid the groundwork for contemporary corporations. In the 17th century, the British East India Company acted as another branch of the British government, subjugating other nations with its armies to exploit them as a labor force. This eventually resulted in the Bengal Famine of 1770 that killed ten million Indians. The company also sold (literal) tons of opium to China, even after the country made the drug illegal, which caused widespread addiction in China.

Transnational corporations have continued their plunder of the Earth and human labor, and their power and influence have never been greater. While many of us rely on them for the goods, services, and jobs they provide, however, exploitative, most of us don’t see them as a problem. The people of the third world and the ecosystems most exploited by corporations, however, are out of sight, out of mind for average citizens of wealthy countries until they migrate as immigrants or refugees, at which point they are scapegoated by the ruling class. Trade unions fight for better working conditions and benefits, but nothing substantial changes about the extractive economy that dominates most of the planet.

The more recent development of telecommunications and news conglomerates enabled these institutions to spread propaganda (as old as states themselves) more broadly than ever before. We have reached a point at which most people do not know who to believe or where to get their news because there is so much misinformation. The world is so large and complex that it’s difficult for all of us to individually verify everything we hear, especially when most of us are busy working just to survive, so instead of doing our own research, many come to trust certain pundits and politicians. This is why many live in alternate realities.

People financially vested in war often obfuscate the reality or oversimplify it. They either claim ambiguously that is “complicated” to avoid acknowledging how one-sided a conflict is or they reduce one side to being evil, (usually the side defending itself from colonialism). War is only made complicated through propaganda. But the reasons for war are almost always the same: money, power, and resources.

There is still immense beauty and value in the world, and it must be preserved. But these institutions see nothing but profit in the Earth’s natural beauty. They seek to exploit or extract all of the world’s natural resources, including people and other life, simply in an attempt to satisfy their insatiable greed. For equity to be more than just an abstract concept, these tools of control must be dismantled. Communities must be formed and organized voluntarily and horizontally, not by force and hierarchy. We can live sustainably in a way that meets our needs and the needs of our ecosystems, which overlap.

Complex systems of communications, transport, and trade have flattened the world and sped up globalization greatly. If socioeconomic relations were extended worldwide in the most responsible way, this would have great benefit. Equal, just, and consistently peaceful relations between all peoples could be established. Borders could be abolished, and languages would not have to be boundaries to the free exchange of information and ideas. But this does happen mainly because of a few selfish actors misunderstand people. Globalization has mostly been driven by a desire for economic conquest and control, which has contributed to these unequal conditions.

Most global trade is also literally driven by fossil fuel burning planes, ships, trains, trucks, and other vehicles, which contribute to anthropogenic climate disruption, one of the most serious problems we face. Global trade has become so integral to states and corporations that many people have forgotten about the importance of interacting with our neighbors, bettering our own neighborhoods, and supporting local organizations. Instead, many simply buy the cheapest products possible made in sweatshops on the other side of the world. In many cases, this is all we can afford.

Beyond “going local,” the specialization and division of labor inherent within capitalism make sustainability and self-reliance nearly impossible. Homesteading, living off the land sustainably requires a diverse set of skills and knowledge that are, for the most part, not taught in traditional schools. As most land is privatized, living off the land legally isn’t even an option for many without money to buy land. Those fortunate enough to go to college generally study one subject, their major, for years. Competition in the job market, therefore, is fierce, there is little reason to collaborate, and there is a strong incentive to keep producing whatever one is trained to produce even if there is no demand or need for it. This is because most are not trained or licensed to do anything else, and our survival depends on continuing to sell whatever we’re trained to make or do.

For blue collar workers who haven’t had the luxury of education, the same is usually true. We find something we’re good at or just a job that is available when we’re young, we get better at it, and once reliant on it, it becomes difficult to switch fields or build enough savings to become independent when we’re simply living paycheck to paycheck. For coal miners and oil workers the environmental impacts may be irrelevant or at least less important than putting food on the table, so these industries continue to grow. If education was offered freely, we could study many subjects and produce all of what we need, reconnect with the land, move away from concentrations of capital, and achieve self-reliance. This would be possible by shifting tax money away from oppressive state functions to education and other social services. The institutions that control us don’t want that because they need us for our labor.

The most significant problems with these institutions are that they have become too concentrated, powerful, and ubiquitous, their ambitions unending, and their direction mostly determined by small groups of affluent, powerful, and extremely arrogant and bigoted individuals. These people, sometimes referred to as the 1%, the bourgeoisie, or the ruling class snuff out the most positive aspects of these institutions like state funded social services and egalitarian religious ideologies. The most powerful and rich people do not want socioeconomic equity because they make their money from inequity. They claim they deserve their wealth, but billionaires don’t work one million times harder than those working minimum wage for them, and hoarding such wealth while innocent people stave is nothing short of sociopathic.

Like the other institutions that control us, religious powers have become global as well. Rulers have found one of the easiest ways to manipulate the public is by claiming they rule by divine right or “God’s will”. Christianity and Islam have spread to nearly every country in the world and 84% of the world was religious in 2010 according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Belief in God is not the problem but rather the institution and hierarchy of organized religion. The religious population has grown so much because religion is forced on us. Religion can be a comfort to many, but the world is also torn apart by it. Religious convictions often separate people with different, deeply held beliefs, and it is one of the most common causes of war. Religious extremism still drives ethnic cleansing, genital mutilation, and genocide to this day, especially in Africa and the Middle East. The state of Israel, for example, uses religion to sickly justify mass killing, apartheid, and torture. Unfortunately, when some well-meaning religious missionaries travel to such places to help, they do not know about the history behind the imperialist indoctrination of native peoples and how it has spread massive violence and disease in the past. When sacred beliefs (especially ones about an afterlife) are all that a group of people have to lose, they often become more inclined to act in extreme, irrational ways, and they may feel their life means nothing if they have an eternity of bliss awaiting them in the “afterlife.”

This introduction will focus on these how these institutions are connected and how we can untangle them from our lives to return to living in equilibrium with the rest of nature.

1.2 Governments

In the United States and many other wealthy nations, it is not possible to run for political office without significant capital. Capital buys campaign advertisements and the propaganda needed to win an election, so most of the time, the people who run for office are already wealthy and powerful, so they have an interest in maintaining the status quo and their own wealth. The ruling class will not support a candidate who wants to make major changes that do not benefit them. Very few middle-income or low-income outsiders achieve political power beyond local office. Even when they do, major change does not come from the top down. The very idea of representative government, the most common form of government in the world, takes power away from us. For politicians to appeal to millions of constituents with vastly different values they must compromise their own values (when they have them at all) and outright lie depending on which group they are addressing. By trying disingenuously to appeal to everyone, they end up representing no one, except their primary donors, the ruling class.

Direct democracy is the only kind of democracy wherein common people have a voice and get to vote on their own laws. But consensus among a community is only possible when it is small and formed voluntarily. Such communities are rare and often subject to the laws and decisions of a much larger nation state. Almost all nation states are built on coercion, violence, slavery, stolen land, and genocide. European immigrants colonized the Americas and killed millions of Native Peoples and enslaved Africans to build modern day nation states. Because they rule by force and the concept of “might is right,” their systems of “justice” are merely theatrical rituals. Cops and soldiers decide when to use force, how much, who to apply it to, and they routinely get away with murder. Prosecutors and judges side with them while many innocent people (along with some guilty) without uniforms, badges, or ridiculous wealth to grant them immunity are locked up and tortured and forced into hard labor for pennies. Justice is impossible in such a system. No one can be trusted with such power. No one group or person can have a monopoly on force without inevitable abuse. As John Dalberg-Acton aptly warned “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The idea that laws could ever be applied equally to all people is a naïve, statist fantasy. We all have biases, including unconscious ones, so even a government consisting of the most well-intentioned people will always apply laws differently to different people, most of all to themselves.

There is simply no need for representatives. We are capable of making decisions about our own lives, and it requires incredibly naivety to trust anyone with the kind of power we give representatives. Some argue representatives are “necessary” because we, common people, don’t have the time to read every bill and piece of legislation. But if so much wasn’t privatized and we could live off the land freely instead of spending the majority of our time working jobs we hate, enriching the ruling class just so we can eat, we would have a great deal more free time to decide what kinds of lives we want. We could ask ourselves are these thousands of rules, regulations, and pieces of legislation hundreds or thousands of pages long necessary? Life ought to be far simpler than states and those vested in capitalism have made it to be.

Far too much of the world is controlled by force, threat of force, propaganda, or some combination of the three. These are the primary tools of governments. If individuals cannot be controlled by force, the easiest way to manipulate them is to deceive them with propaganda, and usually propaganda that instills fear is the most effective. Our opinions are shaped largely by people we have never met, and we are told to hold positions that are against our own collective best interests for the benefit of the ruling class. For example, we are often warned about some ruthless and even apocalyptic threat so that we will support fighting it and even give up our freedoms to defeat it when the “threat” is, in fact, negligible, non-existent, or created by our own government and its zeal for the spoils of war. The most common statist argument for governments is that we need this government to protect us from another government. Essentially, they argue we need governments because of governments; the poison is also the supposed antidote.

We are force-fed laughably incoherent propaganda, such as the “trickledown effect,” which posits tax cuts for the rich are “good for the working class.” They want to convince us that heavy taxes on their incomes to profit the poor would somehow hurt the poor. We are expected to trust that by adding to the riches of the super-rich, they will somehow spill over onto the rest of us and that this is supposed to be more effective than simply taking their wealth and redistributing it among common people. Taxes on the rich, however, can simply be used to fund oppressive state functions rather than social services like education and healthcare. Such a reform is of no benefit to any of us.

Out of all of the institutions that exert control over us, governments may be the most conspicuous. Virtually all governments condone the use of force to control nonviolent people as they see force as a much needed tool, and most states label dissenters and critics of their actions “criminals” or “terrorists”. When governments are built on conquest, genocide, the pilfering and exploitation of land and people, the only legitimate self-defense is directed against them. Violence is often the first and most popular action governments take. They do almost nothing to deter aggression and reduce the will for “crime” and violence while they commit the largest crimes of all.

American police killed about 1100 people in 2014 alone, almost twice the number killed by mass shooters since 1982,[4] yet corporate news media spends far more time discussing mass shooters and gun control for common people. Americans are 58 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist.[5] According to FBI data, in 2008 a total of 14,180 Americans were murdered. The US population according the US Census Bureau was 304.1 million. That same year there were about 765,000 sworn police officers with powers to arrest in America according to a census by the Bureau of Justice,[6] and at least 629 murders by cops[7], (a conservative estimate) which translates to a murder rate of 82.22 per 100,000 cops and just 4.4 murders per 100,000 members of the public. Therefore, the police who are supposed to “protect and serve” murdered 18 times more people than the rest of the public in 2008. That year there was one cop for every 397.51 people, making up about .251% of the total population. In other words this .251% of the populous made up of cops was responsible for about 4.435%of all of the murders. Their victims are primarily the most vulnerable segments of the population, such as people of color, the poor, dissidents, neurodivergent peoples, and those struggling with substance abuse. A report by the Office of Research and Public Affairs entitled “Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters” found that people with mental disorders are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians. The report states “By all accounts – official and unofficial – a minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness.”

In 2013 there were more than ten million people in prison worldwide, and a fifth were locked up in America, despite the fact that America is home to only three percent of the word’s total population.[8] America has by far the largest prison population in the world. In just forty US states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico in 2014, there were at least 7.8 million Americans with outstanding warrants,[9] (3.9 million of whom were wanted for minor misdemeanors) including a staggering 16,000 out of the 21,000 total residents[10] of Ferguson, Missouri, the site of unending police abuses and terror. This doesn’t just devastate those incarcerated but their families as well.

Five million children in the US have had at least one parent in prison[11] and in 2010 2.7 million children (about 3.6% of all children in US) had one parent in prison.[12] That same year 1.8% of white children had an incarcerated parent while a staggering 11.4% black children (about 1 of every 9) had an incarcerated parent. Racists blame black people for supposedly committing more crimes without recognizing the true cause is the racism of the system. Incarcerated parents can lose their children because of the “Adoption and Safe Families Act,” which requires state agencies to terminate parental rights if a child is in foster care for 15 of the preceding 22 months. 73,000 parents lost their rights to raise their children in 2000 alone due to this Act. Only Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma have statutes that prevent this. Certainly, there are unfit parents, but the state cannot decide who is fit and who is not.

Prison is modern day slavery. However, slavery without the guise of “crime and punishment” is still alive and well too, contrary to popular belief, and it is upheld by various governments. According to the Walk Free Foundation there were, in fact, 21-29 million slaves worldwide in 2014 predominately in countries like India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mauritania, (where 4.3% of the population was enslaved that year) and the Ivory Coast.[13] Mauritania’s government waited until 2007 to finally criminalize slavery and it barely helped. Slavery has also increased in Libya in recent years as refugees who seek to escape dictatorships in Africa like Nigeria’s are sold by smugglers there who promise them safe travel for a price.[14] They are then generally captured by Libyan authorities and deported back home with nothing. Investigative journalist, Benjamin Skinner, reported in 2009 there are more slaves today than at any point in human history and slaves are also cheaper than they have ever been. In his research he was offered a ten-year-old sex slave for $50 in Haiti where there are 300,000 child slaves according to UNICEF.[15]

Most of us who live in self-proclaimed “free” countries do not believe that our government is a malicious influence because governments make us believe we need to be protected from the very people and problems (like criminals and poverty) governments and the ruling class help create. Most governments help produce and maintain these problems by creating and maintaining massive economic inequities through the exploitation of the working classes and privatization of the commons, and “crime” naturally follows. Even when (mostly rich) governments develop very socially useful projects like the construction of public libraries, schools, or hospitals, they do not do the physical work. Common people do the work. Common people also fight their wars and buy most of their products while most government representatives never fight their own wars or suffer the consequences of their own policies. Government representatives are simply parasites who feed on the working class and the poor.

Most of us can agree we do need various rules in the world for communities to function well. But we do not need the types of rules we have that were written by people with heavily concentrated power in order to maintain their power, nor do we need governments to enforce these rules. Anarchy has become associated with chaos, but anarchy simply means a system without rulers. The etymology of the word demonstrates that as its root Greek words are “an” and “arkhos”, which together mean “without ruler.” Societies that lack rulers are not chaotic. Quite the opposite is the case. Rulers create chaos in their quest for greater power, capital, and control.

Anarchy does not have to mean the absence of government. But any form of anarchic government or organization has to be voluntarily created with the consent of all, organized from the bottom up with no legitimate monopoly on force. As the central tenant of anarchism is “no rulers” there can be no managers or wage slavery. Instead, under anarchy workplaces are collectively managed and this makes it quite similar to libertarian socialism. For libertarian socialism or anarchy to function, there must be willingness to collaborate. Collectivization cannot be forced on common people. However, the wealthiest parasitical rulers must be forced by the people (not by state decree) to give up their power and ill-gotten resources by any means necessary because this is an act of self-defense and defense of the planet.

There is no court, government body, or single person, no matter how sound or intelligent, that could make decisions that are always correct about what is morally right. Every aspect of human behavior cannot be controlled anyway, even if there was a perpetually accurate moral body to make these decisions about what is right and wrong. We must have the freedom to act as we wish with the central understanding that we must respect the autonomy of others, except in defense of our lives or others. The best behaviors cannot be forced from us but fostered. Fundamentally, we need to build a more just society to reduce the will for violence and coercion by treating voluntary, quality education, life-saving information, healthy food, potable water, clean air, biodiversity, healthcare, and freedom as basic human needs.

The evils of the world will never be legislated away. The world will only reach an equilibrium and a positive peace and equity with complete freedom. Of course, people’s interests and values inevitably collide and there will likely always be some violence. Some people will never be deterred to stop hurting others without being killed themselves. But that is a natural part of life, and it can be reduced by removing all governmental, corporate, and religious authorities from power who call themselves “legitimate.” They continually get away with their crimes and suffer no consequences because authority figures don’t punish themselves. A system wherein no one has authority over anyone else against their will and people use their best judgment is the only one that will foster the best behaviors from everyone.

What many people who have their faith in the state don’t realize is that government is not an abstract, impartial institution that always works in the same way. It is made up of very flawed, biased individuals and one judge’s or cop’s conception and interpretation of the law and “justice” can differ from another. Facts can be irrelevant in court. Prosecutors, for example, always argue for guilty verdicts because it is their job. What it true doesn’t matter to them. Because they want to win, they manipulate the jury when there is one. Whether the defense or the prosecution is more effective at manipulation determines many cases. (Appealing to the ego of authority figures often works too.) If a judge simply doesn’t like someone, he or she can punish the defendant with the most severe sentence. Cops, prosecutors, prison guards, and soldiers similarly make decisions everyday about how to deal with people with little to no accountability, oversight, nor regard for the actual law oftentimes. There is no “law.” They are mere words on pieces of paper but how they are enforced, if at all, is a matter of personal discretion of the people in the government, so it is much more chaotic than many realize.

The solution isn’t “better” people to fill these roles because these positions of immense power, are the core problems. No one can or should be trusted with that kind of power. Most people with “the law” on their side use it as a mere excuse to do whatever they want to do with no consequences. Cops decide what constitutes “reasonable suspicion” and judges have the power to uphold or deny these judgments. They also wrongly assume fear of them constitutes “reasonable suspicion”. Innocent people get arrested, harassed, beaten, and killed by police all the time. That’s why people fear them. But they assume people fear them because they have “something to hide.” Meanwhile, the fears of cops are always assumed to be rational in court and a “legitimate” cause for murdering other people. The excuse “I feared for my life” is usually enough to exonerate a cop in court of murder. But a citizen could never use that defense against a cop in court even though citizens have far more reasons to fear cops.

When the fragile ego of these authority figures is challenged, their reaction is usually to break the law to get what they want. As an example, in June 2014 after Brevard County Judge, John C. Murphy, demanded assistant public defender, Andrew Weinstock, waive his client’s right to a trial and he refused, the judge demanded he sit down. When Weinstock didn’t sit, the judge said “If you want to fight, let’s go out back and I’ll just beat your ass.” The Judge then punched him in the face twice. Though the judge was fired, the altercation exemplifies the absurdity of having these “legal vacuums” in the confines of courtrooms and more broadly the whole idea of laws and “supreme authority” that can’t be questioned by threat of incarceration or death. They believe they can do whatever they want because they’re “in charge.” The cops in the courtroom didn’t intervene because they work for the state.

Higher courts like the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights that can prosecute politicians and others in the state for crimes rarely work because their decisions aren’t enforced. For example, on March 4, 2009 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s genocidal dictator for crimes against humanity but the government of Sudan simply ignored the warrant, illustrating the ineffectiveness of courts in general. All trials are a sham. They only result in action when the government wants and has the force and resources to enforce the decisions. Al-Bashir was later deposed in a military coup in 2019 and served a mere two years in prison. He was replaced by a de facto military dictatorship.

When the concept of authority is put into practice, it always destroys accountability because the buck is always passed from higher-ups to underlings and vice versa. Everyone involved gets to absolve themselves of responsibility because they claim, “I’m just doing my job to survive.” Some other common excuses include, “I’m just following orders,” “I’m trying to do good,” “I’m trying to change the system from within,” “If I quit someone worse will take my place,” and “I’m just trying to support my family.” But they continue to contribute to the system and act as if they have no other options, which is an egregious lie.

When your neighborhood plumber makes a mistake, he is generally held completely accountable. But when a so-called “peace officer” or other government official kills an innocent person, it’s called a “professional error” that most of society chalks up to the “stress of the job” because the “peace officer” isn’t an individual; he represents the institution of government that statists believe must be defended, even if it means covering up the crimes of individuals in them.

The most heinous actions ever committed in history were performed by people claiming to be “just following orders,” such as the pilots who dropped nuclear bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the officers of Japanese internment camps commanded by their “superiors.” Because they were just listening to their commanding officers, they were able to absolve themselves of all responsibility for their actions. Their commanding officers often did the same as they argued they only gave the commands but did not actually do anything beyond that. This hierarchy that allows for so much endless buck-passing exists so that no one has to feel responsible for the atrocities of war and state terror. As Peter Gelderloos explains in his book, The Failure of Nonviolence,“In most institutions, the degree of separation between one’s actions and the consequences is far greater. There is not a single boss and victim on the other side of the door, but multiple layers of authority to whom the buck can be passed, and the consequences are usually out of sight and out of mind.” (Gelderloos, Peter: The Failure of Nonviolence, pg. 126).

Arrogant egomaniacs are sworn into power under the pretense of “legitimacy, divine right, and moral character” but as stated what’s right and wrong are subjective and no one can make a ruling that is “officially right.” There’s nothing democratic about representation. Yet virtually all representative governments call themselves “democracies.” Giving one person the ability to sentence thousands to life in a cage or to be beaten, raped, or killed is antithetical to direct democracy.

There is a terrible myth that those of us from the so-called “first world” live in “democracies.” But most of us never give the government consent to rule our lives. We are not even capable of giving consent (legally) when we are born and yet we are still immediately governed by a myriad of laws and the inclinations of those with the law on their side. And leaving the country costs money many don’t have. Registering to vote is made difficult for minorities due to “voter fraud” laws[16], gerrymandering essentially allows politicians to pick their voters, and the influence of super PACs (political action committees) and unlimited corporate donations limit who can even run for office and what they can say and do. Further, 6.1 million Americans are prohibited from voting at all due to felony convictions[17]. Even when we can vote, in America our votes in the presidential elections make no difference at all because the electoral college overrides the popular vote. Americans can overwhelmingly vote for one candidate who still loses if the electoral college decides to choose someone else.

Many of us object and protest but the government doesn’t care, unless we interfere with the state’s operations. Governments steal our money via taxation and then act as if they are charitable for giving away a few food stamps. The myth that they rule with our consent or that any government in any way resembles a “democracy” is one of the most terrible, ubiquitous lies that will not seem to die. No government gives anyone freedom or rights. Governments can only take away freedom. No government, no matter how it is structured, could ever guarantee anyone’s safety. Nothing can. But as many don’t want to live with uncertainty, they believe the myth the governments keep them safe. Governments want you to be grateful they haven’t kidnapped you and thrown you in a cage. But only obsequious, boot-licking sycophants are grateful for fascist regimes showing relative mercy.

While the electoral college is relatively new, it’s not as if democracy died as soon as it was introduced. In the Constitutional Convention, James Madison (a slaveowner) said that the government’s utmost imperative is to “protect the opulent minority from the majority” because the wealthy are the “more responsible set of men.” The rest in attendance agreed. The Constitution concentrated the power of the government in the Senate, which back then was not elected. It was selected by rich property owners and served as a sort of electoral college.

Twelve US Presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant owned slaves. The colonizers attempted to justify slavery by dehumanizing them, just as they did indigenous people. George Washington, a widely revered “founding father” in America referred to indigenous peoples as “savages” and “beasts of prey” in an attempt to justify further colonization: “The gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire; both being beasts of prey though they differ in shape.” [18]

The United States is still the world’s number one empire and threat. The US government wages war on everyone who dare oppose its hegemony. In this book I will demonstrate that this government funds and commits more terror than any other country in the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2015 the US spent $597 billion on military expenditures, about as much as the next eight top military spenders combined, (China spent $215 billion, Saudi Arabia spent $87.2 billion, Russia spent $66.4 billion, the UK spent $55.5 billion, India spent $51.3 billion, France spent $50.9 billion, Japan spent $40.9 billion, and Germany spent $39.4 billion), enough money to end world hunger. If the budget of the Pentagon, homeland security, nuclear programs in the DoE, veteran benefits, and intelligence agencies is included in the tally of US military expenditures, the figure rises to a staggering $900 billion per year.[19]

In 2009 the US government had soldiers in 148 countries.[20] In 2010 there were 4,999 military facilities in the US, its territories, and overseas according to the Pentagon’s 2010 Base Structure Report. There are 50,000 American troops in Southern Germany alone. In 2011 the US government sold weapons to 172 countries[21], (more than 50% of the global total of weaponry sold) including countries rife with government terrorism and police brutality, such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the Congo, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The US military openly targets hospitals, schools, mosques, UN centers, and other civilian infrastructure in Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen and various other countries and has the gall to blame their targets for using “human shields.” The US government operates CIA black site prisons like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Stare Kiejkuty in Poland (formerly an outpost for the Nazi intelligence service) and black-site prisons like them on American soil like Homan Square in Chicago where Americans are being held, humiliated, confined, raped, and tortured without trial, representation, or the light of day, most having never committed a crime.

The US government funds dictatorships like Saudi Arabia’s “Royal Family” that offer resources valuable to US corporations like oil, and it executes democratically elected leaders like Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when they stand in the way of corporate America’s profits. In December 2013, the U.S. State Department admitted that President Eisenhower authorized his murder and his killers received CIA funding and weapons. The US has fueled genocides across the world in South Sudan, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, the Congo, East Timor, Yemen, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and many more. Every single US President in history has committed crimes against humanity.

US police and prison guards detain, harass, beat, torture, incarcerate, and kill without due process. Their word is always trusted in courts. Savage, bloodthirsty prosecutors and judges side with killer cops. Almost none are convicted. The US Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer with 3.3 million employees and being an American soldier is one of the most popular jobs on the planet, despite the fact that so few gain anything from it. Unemployment, homelessness, suicide, mental disorders (like PTSD, severe depression, anxiety, and so on), and disabling injuries are all very common among veterans. So long as men and women are willing to sacrifice themselves as cannon fodder to expand US hegemony, the empire will live on.

Those considering joining the military need to understand the state doesn’t care about them. As just one example, during the Vietnam War the Kennedy administration with the participation of the UK, Canada, and Australia conducted Project 112, a biological and chemical experiment wherein sarin, VX, e. coli, tear gas, and other biological agents were sprayed on Porton Down in the UK, Ralston Canada, and 13 US warships to test if the nerve agents would result in temporary paralysis. 60,000 US soldiers were sprayed with these poisons in these experiments, which were also known as the Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The state simply views soldiers and the rest of us as lab rats and expendable cogs in the machine.

As stated the empires of the Americas (North, Central, and South) were all built on slavery, stolen land, and genocide. During the 16^th Century alone a heart-wrenching 100 million native people were wiped out by settlers, colonists, and European and American government empires, including 10 million in North America, 30 million in Central America, and 50 to 70 million in South America.[22] Most who survived were enslaved or forced onto reservations (thousands of Cherokee were forced into concentration camps before being forced on the Trail of Tears) and Indian Boarding schools where their culture and identity were destroyed, they were forced to speak English and prohibited from singing all Native songs upon penalty of beatings or rape. The economy of the Americas was also built by African slaves kidnapped from their homeland, as well as the slave labor of many other races. Our current laws and prisons reflect that history. As mentioned minorities today make up a disproportionately large portion of the prison population. In 2008 one out of every 36 adult Hispanic men in America was behind bars and one out of every nine black men (ages 20-34) was imprisoned as well.[23] (Further, one out of every nine people in prison is serving a life sentence.)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2008 3,161 of every 100,000 African Americans of all age groups were in prison while only 487 of every 100,000 whites were imprisoned According to the NAACP, in 2008 Black and Hispanics made up 58% of the US prison population, even though Black and Hispanic people consist of approximately one quarter of the US population. These disproportionate numbers are mostly due to racism in our laws, court systems, police departments, and federal agencies, as well as inherited poverty in communities with many minorities. These discrepancies are also due to the unfair expectations many people have of minorities. What sells in mainstream, corporate media is not usually a success story about a minority who worked hard building a business or a nonprofit. Instead, stories about minorities selling drugs, pimping, playing professional sports, or rapping sell. The road to success for minorities is made intentionally very narrow. (And even in an art form like rap, there is massive exploitation. Rappers talking about real issues don’t get the most contracts or airtime. They are a minority.) Some internalize these expectations and this narrow vision of success, believing they can do no more. Minority groups are also turned on each other by the state and corporations, further increasing the murder rate of minorities in the same way the state turns whites against minorities. The state argues the government is not the cause of black people’s woes; but rather Hispanics, Muslims, Asians or even other black people moving in their neighborhoods are to blame.

“Criminals” are products of society just like everyone else. They are shaped by the environments they are raised in. Governments and other institutions that control us do not like to admit this because they want to “other them” or dehumanize them so that they can attempt to justify waging an endless war against them them instead of resolving the omnipresent socioeconomic inequities that cause crime created by the super-rich and their oppressive institutions.

Crime that targets innocent people can be prevented by reducing poverty, desperation, ignorance, and suffering, which are created by the very same institutions that attempt to justify using violence and mass incarceration as a way to “contain” crime. Further, there are also crimes that are positive to commit like not paying taxes, stealing from billionaires to feed the poor, sabotaging the operations of ecocidal corporations, dodging the draft, or helping immigrants cross the border illegally. The focus should not be on crime reduction but the elimination of laws that criminalize behavior and foster the worst in us.

Despite popular misconceptions about prisoners, very few people go to prison for violent crime. Most people arrested each year in America and in almost every country are incarcerated for drug crimes. Out of the 10,797,088 arrests made in the US in 2015, more were made for drug crimes than for any other type of crime.[24] (There are more people in prison for violent crime than for nonviolent drug crime, however, because violent offenders are generally kept there far longer.) Prison, in almost all cases, makes people much more violent. If there wasn’t so much violence and inequity inflicted by powerful institutions, far fewer people would want to be violent.

According to a 2016 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, seventy percent of the 646,000 people incarcerated in more than 3,000 US local jails were still awaiting trial and not yet convicted of a crime because they could not afford bail. The report correctly states the “constitutional principle of innocent until proven guilty only really applies to the well off…Using Bureau of Justice Statistics data, we find that, in 2015 dollars, people in jail had a median annual income of $15,109 prior to their incarceration, which is less than half (48%) of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar ages. People in jail are even poorer than people in prison and are drastically poorer than their non-incarcerated counterparts,”[25]

Former inmates found innocent before a trial or after reopening a trial (usually because of a new piece of evidence that surfaces) and who spent years in prison also aren’t offered any reparations or even apologies. Presumption of innocence is a legal principle that has its roots in Roman law. It was considered essential even then when slavery was an accepted practice, and the writ of Habeas corpus or a version of it is used by most self-proclaimed “democratic” governments today, yet in 2020 in Libya 90% of all prisoners were awaiting trial. In Paraguay the figure is 77.9%, 74.9% in Benin, and 74.4% in the Philippines. In the notoriously corrupt Congo 73% of the prison population is awaiting trial. In Yemen it’s 70.1%. Venezuela has the second highest percentage of pretrial detainees of any South American country at 71.3%. Uruguay and Bolivia are close behind. Even Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, and Sierra Leone, incredibly corrupt and autocratic states, have lower percentages. In the US 20.3% of the prison population is awaiting trial. Only one state in the entire world, the tiny island of Tuvalu, has no pretrial detainees.[26]

People in power pursue “criminals” most aggressively when they are not making money for them (as many criminals don’t pay taxes on money acquired illicitly), so many are caught and put in prisons where they are forced to work for the government and its corporations often for mere pennies an hour. Simply not having money or a home is enough to be labeled as a criminal in many countries. For example, the London’s Hackney Council wrote an order called the “Public Space Protection Order,” which fines homeless people who sleep outside up to £1000 or about $1500 USD.[27] The Vagrancy Act of 1824 that is still law criminalizes sleeping on the streets and begging in the whole of England and Wales. There are similar laws in various US cities, prohibiting eating, sleeping, begging, and even sitting outside.

Most prisons are places of punishment, not reformation. Governments claim the purpose of imprisonment is to protect people, but they are doing the opposite by keeping prisoners in cages where they only become more anti-social, angry, and connected with other criminals, which causes most of them to be greater threats to society when they are released. Recidivism is so high largely because prisons don’t want to reform anyone. War is also often waged for financial gain and the same fear tactics are used to garner public support for it. People are coerced into fighting and spending, because it is irrational to do another person harm who isn’t harming you, just as it is irrational to mindlessly spend money and consume, and fear is generally the tool used to coerce us into these behaviors.

1.3 Billion Dollar, Transnational Corporations

Billion-dollar, transnational corporations exert much of their influence through governments with their lobbyists and political campaign funding. We are surrounded by corporations, their products, advertisements, waste, and destruction because governments support them in nearly every respect. Unless you live in the mountains of Siberia, the effects of corporations are hard to avoid. Not all corporations are the same, of course, but the most successful only become so lucrative by paying next to nothing or stealing resources and labor to create the cheapest products on the market. This gives them monopolies on certain vital services and products, which are denied to those who cannot afford them in our “free market” system. As mentioned opting out of this corporate-state controlled system is quite difficult when just about everything has been “claimed” as “private property.” Foraging, hunting, and farming (without capital, a license to hunt, or a land title) have become nearly impossible, and we have become the only species on Earth that has to pay to live.

Large corporations don’t merely dictate to the public which products we “need” to buy. They keep us in perpetual debt with their usury, lending us printed notes with interest rates so high over such long periods that we end up paying twice or more the value of loan or worse, defaulting, so that they can take away all our possessions, which they sell at auction for profit. Other corporations sell us medications that can create addictions and kill us. They sell us unhealthy, genetically modified food that they refuse to label sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides known to cause cancer in humans and kill other animals, food that is primarily consumed by the poorest among us because they are the cheapest foods available. They push cigarettes and alcohol (the largest preventable causes of death) on us while governments imprison millions for using cannabis, a drug that has killed no one. They sell us blood diamonds, clothing stitched by children in sweatshops and inmates, wood from old growth forests, and oil drilled as a spoil of war. And they sell us fantasies that are supposed to alleviate the crushing solitude and alienation created by capitalism. Corporations do this by flooding the airwaves and streets with invasive advertisements that create wants. They decide what people want and they make us fear the consequences of not owning what they are selling. They make us feel inadequate without the latest device or the biggest house. They make us fear ending up alone if we do not buy one product or another. They try to make us value products over each other. We are told that somehow every product is “integral” to our lives because we are not just being sold a product but a lifestyle, a whole identity, something that we can hide behind.

Corporate power is rooted in governments. The most technologically advanced governments in history always felt entitled to more than they had, so they colonized new land to take its resources and exploit its cultures that were less technologically advanced. Out of colonialism grew modern imperialism and hegemony driven by the most rich and powerful people on the planet. Modern corporations and states have managed to re-brand imperialism, so few people recognize that imperialism is what is being forced on them. Teachers in history classes often talk about the historic empires of England, France, Russia, China, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the US and so forth, but these states are still empires. They still have by far the most economic and military power, which they use to gain more of the same.

Major corporations today are run by the same principles as the first joint-stock companies. They make money by exploiting poor people and they feel they have a right to as much money as they can possibly take without giving back to anyone who has less. This is misanthropic and nihilistic. Some individual transnational corporations make almost as much money as entire continents. For example, Walmart’s revenue in 2010 was $421 billion. This was greater than the individual GDP of about 165 officially recognized countries. Only about 27 of the richest countries had a GDP greater than Walmart’s 2010 revenue, and Walmart made most of this money by exploiting their underpaid Chinese and American workers.

This money is further concentrated in the hands of just a few owners of these corporations. According to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Forbes list of the richest 400 Americans had more wealth (a total of $2.34 trillion) than the bottom 61% of the nation (194 million people) combined.[28] The report also found “The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population – plus more than a third of the Latino population – combined.” Another report by Oxfam published in February 2017 showed that the eight richest men in the world own as much as the poorest half of humanity.[29] Further, between 1988 and 2011, “the incomes of the poorest 10% of people increased by less than $3 a year while the incomes of the richest 1% increased 182 times as much.” Most of that wealth is concentrated in America. In fact, 50% of the world’s richest one percent are Americans[30] To be a member of that one percent in America, one must make at least $380,000 a year. However, to be a part of the richest one percent of the world as a total, one only needs an annual income of $34,000 (after taxes).

Billions of dollars is not made from hard work but rather from inherited or stolen resources, exploitative corporations, and other state funded institutions. (No billionaires are truly “self-made.”) This is especially true in countries that have far fewer opportunities than America or none at all. Hoarding money or resources needed to survive ought to be considered sociopathic when there are people who die without them. In many cultures, hoarding extreme wealth and resources is instead lauded and seen as commendable. Billionaires are considered inspirational “success stories” gushed about in the media because they exist in profoundly sick cultures.

Money only equals survival because governments and corporations have privatized our means of survival. But we don’t need fiat currency. We need healthy soil, clean air, potable water, and thriving, diverse ecosystems. Money is just printed linen and cloth. It only has value because it backed by state power, and it creates endless violence. This book will make the case that barter, social currencies, resource-based economies, and perhaps even decentralized cryptocurrencies are more than sufficient to meet our needs.

1.4 The Corporate News Media

Mainstream, corporate media conglomerates do little else but instill fear and spread propaganda. Openly partisan, political pundits and talking heads instill most of this fear but even mainstream news castors who try to be objective are still very affected by corporate and political interests since their employers own giant corporations tied to governments. Since former US President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law, under which Title 3 allows cross-ownership of media giants, most media outlets have conglomerated into the “big six,” (GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS) which control about 90% of the American media. They have consolidated their power and influence to increase cronyism and lies to serve their socioeconomic and political ends. Just a handful of large corporations own the most viewed news stations in the world and they lie to viewers every minute, essentially constituting an oligopoly on telecommunications.

Viacom owns CBS, formerly known as the Colombia Broadcasting System, which itself owns 30 TV stations, CBS radio, and publisher, Simon & Schuster. Disney owns ABC, the American Broadcasting Company, 30 radio stations, ESPN, A&E, Lifetime, music, video game, and publishing companies. Disney is also partnered with the Hearst corporation, which owns more networks, newspapers, and magazines. Time Warner owns CNN, Cinemax, HBO, Warner Brothers, Newline Cinema, DC Comics, TBS, TNT, and more. General Electric (GE) was formerly owned by NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, before it was bought by Comcast, which owns AT&T Broadband, 14 NBC TV stations, Telemundo, NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, Peacock Productions, the Weather Channel, Bravo, E!, USA network, parts of the MLB and NHL networks, part of Hulu, Seeso, Universal Pictures, and DreamWorks. GE now owns GE real estate, GE Capital Aviation Services, GE Oil and Gas, GE Power and water, and GE healthcare. The News Corporation owns Fox News, the Fox broadcasting company, Fox Business Network, National Geographic, FX, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Barron’s, SmartMoney, 20th Century Fox, and Harper Collins. Even local news stations are owned by large corporations like Belo, Gannett, Media General, and Post-Newsweek. These giant conglomerates make billions of dollars by selling us the “big lies.”

The ties these media conglomerates have to politicians and other government sources are usually significant and sometimes very conspicuous. For example, Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York and one of the richest people on Earth worth $46 billion in 2018 owns Bloomberg L.P., which includes news, TV, and radio stations, along with Bloomberg Terminal, a subscription service that provides privileged stock information to large financial firms. None of these properties were considered a conflict of interest during his term as mayor, yet people turn to the news for supposedly objective reporting. It is impossible for a man to write about himself objectively, nor would you expect any criticism from any Bloomberg editor or reporter when the man pays them for their reporting. Much like Trump, when Bloomberg ran for President, he felt no need to sell this conglomerate and merely barred writers from reporting on him.[31] Bloomberg has made his attraction to power no secret. On November 29^th 2011, he bragged to MIT during a speech: “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” This army has virtually created a police-state in New York and police corruption there is rampant.

The corporate media has a more subtle influence on individuals than governments do because it doesn’t use force to control people, but words are often more powerful. Even without using force, the media has blood on its hands. Despite having the ability to stop mass atrocities by promoting awareness of them, the corporate news media usually avoids them if they implicate their own government or corporate sponsors. The US-sponsored massacre of innocent civilians in East Timor in 1991 is one example. Most major US news outlets did not report it. Many of the most deadly conflicts are not reported on, such as the genocide in South Sudan and the Congo. (Part of the reason for this is that they don’t want to discourage tourism and investment there for the benefit of US corporations abroad.) But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11^th, which killed 3000 people, have received more attention from US news outlets than perhaps any other attack in history. The coverage on them along with the rhetoric was largely used to justify the invasion and carpet bombings of Afghanistan and Iraq, which have killed over a million people.[32] Exploiting tragedy is a very common tactic to generate fear to serve political and financial ends and ratings. But if there is no money to be made from the tragedy, coverage of it is avoided.

The corporate news media distorts the realities of war in step with the state. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are but two examples. Much of the reporting on the Cold War efforts were spun incredibly on both sides of the conflict as well, which will be discussed in this in book. Today, we hear about U.S. soldiers “fighting nobly” in the Middle East nearly every day from US news media conglomerates, but we rarely hear about the millions who have been killed in the region and the crimes against humanity committed by the US military and private military contractors.

The corporate news media in general does not want to report on any humanitarian crises that are too polarizing, depressing, or that implicate their government or their sponsors for fear that they will lose their support. Investigative, corporate journalists often get their information from government officials who are reluctant to keep providing them with newsworthy information if it is not spun in the government’s favor. Therefore, we often hear more about the social lives of politicians than their policies because this is what safely sells.

The current famine in Eastern and Central Africa is almost never discussed on major news stations in America or in other rich countries, and millions more may die as a result. The ongoing genocide in the Congo has killed six million people with little US coverage or intervention, except from mostly independent journalists. Catastrophes like hurricanes do not usually get worldwide attention, unless they are very severe or they involve a rich country or are situated next to one. If a US construction firm is contracted to rebuild after the disaster, mainstream news reporters suddenly become bleeding hearts, begging for donations. This is also often done to attract emotional investment and time because this translates into better ratings and more money for the owners of these broadcasting companies. (WPRI News owned by ABC contacted me very quickly after my sister went missing, not because they were concerned, but because they wanted a story. They also cut most of what I said from their segment.) Oftentimes, when there is a tragedy it is best not to dwell on it and endlessly relive the experience because it makes it more difficult to move forward, but that is exactly what corporate news stations do.

Politicians also exploit tragedy. When US wars are waged, US construction companies with ties to politicians often secure contracts from the government responsible for the damage to rebuild. The Clintons in particular have a history of profiting from disasters and funds intended for disaster relief. For example, when the earthquake of January 2010 devastated Haiti, relief supplies were delayed from landing at an airport in Haiti so that Hillary could land there for a photo-op and a press conference, make a statement, and then fly back to Washington. $13 billion dollars was raised from international relief organizations for Haiti at the time. Senior Adviser and Counsel for Hillary’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, Cheryl Mills, was responsible for the allocation of US tax money to Haiti through USAID. Bill had been previously appointed as special envoy to Haiti for the UN and was then named co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. The Clintons ensured the money intended for disaster relief went to Clinton donors who had economic interests in Haiti. $124 million went to one textile factory in Caracol in Nord-Est on the north shore of Haiti, a region unaffected by the earthquake. The factory was supposed to create 64,000 jobs but only created 5000 and the biggest beneficiaries were Gap, Target, and Walmart, which received tariff-free textiles produced via cheap Haitian labor. Further, the New Settlements Program in Haiti was supposed to build 15,000 homes for $53 million but instead built 2600 homes for $90 million. Most of the money was used to build luxury hotels right next to those devastated by earthquake. Dalberg Global Development Advisers was also supposed to relocate people made homeless from earthquake but chose the edge of a cliff as their camp site. The obvious subtext was “jump”.

The corporate news media in rich countries like America often distracts individuals from issues that have the greatest social impact. It primarily keeps people complacent in rich countries because most corporations and politicians do not want wealthier citizens to resist since they have the resources to affect inequality. There are brilliant exceptions, of course, but they are rare and often less popular because they are not propped up by large corporations. Ironically, satirists who get mainstream attention are often propped up some of the very same media monopolies they criticize.

Media distractions exist because there is a demand for them. Beyond news many television programs, songs, films, and other types of media have made people obsessed with celebrity life and the pursuit of wealth. They make many of us believe that we can become rich and famous as long as we work hard enough, which makes us slave away tirelessly in our unsatisfying jobs to no avail. The goal is to keep us chasing the dream without ever reaching it. This is done by constantly increasing competition and demanding productivity, using the most desperate individuals to secure the lowest costs of labor and creating crime, which they can further profit from. Desperate people willing to work for next to nothing are blamed for “taking jobs” away from the middle class instead of blaming greedy employers willing to exploit these desperate people and refusing to pay decent wages.

As a result of the dearth of values in the corporate media, too many people want to be celebrities in rich countries like America. Millions of people broadcast and expose themselves in every way that technology allows them until nothing in their lives is private anymore, and nothing is considered too banal to share. Too many are unaware of world-wide problems because of this. Online newsfeeds are cluttered with selfies and cat pictures instead of real news. However, if most people were made aware of the world’s many pressing humanitarian crises, they would likely feel compelled to do something.

Even when our hard work pays off and we are able to achieve mass appeal through our talent or knowledge, we are often exploited by the private sector to benefit those who already have a great deal of capital. The smartest students, for example, are very often exploited for their knowledge and ideas by large corporations and left penniless. But students can fix this problem by collaborating and spreading knowledge freely and democratically, as well as by creating their own collaboratives, collectives, and nonprofit universities and never selling out to large corporations.

The most financially successful, corporate news media outlets in poor countries generally invoke even more fear and stoop to more egregious demagoguery and jingoism, scapegoating minorities unapologetically to explain why there is massive inequality and suffering. This is often done to incite action, rather than complacency. Poorer people usually have less access to the diversity of information and education that richer people enjoy, which makes it harder to find the truth, and these institutions that control us take advantage of that. There are fewer mindless distractions in poor countries because common people in them do not have the money for them, and their rulers mostly want them producing in factories, fighting in the military, or exploiting minorities as police, instead of being distracted.

There is a handful of incredible television programs, films, and reliable, trustworthy news programs nearly globally. But overall there is far too much corporate and political influence on the media, and this is responsible for global problems. The most widely disseminated media ought to be the most socially or environmentally useful, educational, or valuable in some capacity but that is far from the reality. Instead, what is disseminated most right now is whatever will sell most easily or what governments and corporations pay to run to further their own agendas.

As Noam Chomsky wrote in Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, “Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship.” Politicians in wealthy self-labeled “democracies” create the illusion of freedom and control popular opinion because citizens in them have the money to enrich politicians further and vote in their favor. But in poorer countries ruled by unapologetic dictators, monarchs, or oligarchs, this illusion of freedom does not need to exist to maintain their wealth as public has very little. Force is used far more often because citizens there are only considered useful to their government as instruments of production or warfare.

The corporate news media, corporations more broadly, governments, and religious institutions are constantly feeding us false dichotomies, forcing us into Manichean binary thinking to conquer and divide. They tell us either you’re a republican or you’re a democrat. You either support this politician and hate his or her opponent or vice versa. Either you’re conservative or liberal. Either you’re a hawk or a dove. Either you like Coke or Pepsi. Either you’re a saint or sinner. You’re either a Catholic or Presbyterian. You’re a capitalist or Communist. You’re either right or wrong, and so on. They make no room for gray area or nuance, even though the world is full of both. This forces common people to bicker and turn against each other: whites turn against people of color, Christians and Jews turn against Muslims, men turn against women, vice versa, and so on. They also do this by “othering” minorities, drawing clear demarcations in society and drawing attention away from the source of the world’s misery: the very institutions attempting to divide us and put us into boxes, rooting for “our team”. This makes most people overlook the faults of their “own team” while focusing relentlessly on the faults of the “opposing team” and inventing faults, even if those faults are shared by “their team”. As a result, many don’t focus on discovering what is true or morally right. They focus on winning the argument, the competition, or the war. It is an exercise in hypocrisy. If they hear the puppet they voted for committed war crimes, instead of looking into these accusations and updating their position accordingly, they ignore them (this is an example of cognitive dissonance) because most people don’t like to admit they’ve made a mistake. They’d rather keep living the lie and convince themselves they made the right decision.

It’s easier to cast off the journalist who revealed the war crimes of our favorite politician as crazy, stupid, or wrong than it is to reevaluate our own values and choices. Most of us seek out sources of information that only reaffirm our values and choices we’ve already made. This confirmation bias ensures we learn next to nothing. The institutions that control us also instill in us a collective amnesia or “organized forgetting.” Most bemoan the past president and swear never to fall for the “political tricks” again, but when election season starts anew, they are wooed once again into believing the solution is one politician here to save the day. The system never fundamentally changes because most people don’t learn from history. They accept the official narrative, which is almost always a lie and they side with their oppressors in a kind of collective Stockholm syndrome for some false sense of security.

Corporate news media has a tendency to reduce complex issues to soundbites or sensationalist headlines, not just because they want to simplify social movements to fit their agenda and reduce critical thinking but also because airtime is so coveted and expensive. It’s all up for grabs and they’d rather use that airtime to sell coke or pepsi than a revolutionary idea or polemic.

1.5 Organized Religion: The Forth and Most Unique Influence

All of the institutions that control us are connected. They are motivated by similar or sometimes the same exact aims. They use many of the same methods to control us and they all make controlling the public easier for each other. But organized religion is a very unique, controlling influence and one of the most powerful because it often affects the rulers in charge as much as it does the rest of us. Some religious leaders positively impact people’s lives while others control and shape people’s minds in negative ways, not always for selfish reasons because many do not see the harm they are doing, and in fact, believe they are helping.

The Vatican proclaims itself openly as a religious state as does Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others that impose Sharia law. But they are somehow seen as normal by some, despite the extravagance of the Vatican, Saudi Arabia’s countless human rights violations and misogyny, and the Israeli government’s complete disregard for the lives of Palestinians, minorities in Israel, and anyone who opposes them. Some even consider these states “Holy” because they have their religion to hide behind. There is no separation of Church and State in these countries. Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, even carried out mass killings of Palestinian leaders under the code name “Operation Wrath of God.” Religion and government in practice are inseparable.

Like corporate executives and politicians, some very powerful religious leaders use fear and force a great deal. People are made to fear God, and the consequences of not believing in some “Holy Book” or another, despite the fact that these books are extremely contradictory. Violence has been used in history endlessly by religious groups, and religion is still the cause of or justification used for most wars and terrorist attacks.

Nearly every violent empire in history had a dominant religion that was used to justify imperial conquest and violence. The Holocaust, the Inquisition, the Taiping Rebellion, the Thirty Years War, the Crusades, the French Religious wars, the witch hunts, suicide bombings in Iraq, the genocide of native peoples by Christopher Columbus (whose name literally means “Christ-bearer Colonizer”[33]) and the many empires that fought over Israel used religion as an excuse. One year after Columbus’s first voyage, “Pope Alexander VI in his Inter Cetera Divina Papal Bull granted Spain all the world not already possessed by Christian states, excepting the region of Brazil, which went to Portugal.”[34] Catholic Priests in 1524 also helped Pedro de Alvarado and his soldiers slaughter the Mayans in Guatemala, in some cases by burning them alive, and then destroying the records of their existence. Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries also aided the Spanish and Portuguese empire in colonizing most of South America.

Certain groups of people usually claim they have the “right” to destroy other peoples because of “God given superiority”. Moreover, most wars that weren’t solely motivated by religion were waged by people who felt they were doing God’s bidding, which is not surprising considering most religious texts say that murder and war under certain circumstances are acceptable. Most individuals are more fearful of God than they are of the people they call their enemies, and politicians and clergy use this fear to serve their own interests.

A government that claims to be “ordained by God” (as some do like Israel’s) could not be more dangerous or potentially deceptive and manipulative. While many states call for a separation of Church and state, in effect they’ve always been inseparable. The US government proselytized Native children, forcing them to give up their own religion and culture. Some politicians today have succeeded in passing measures that require children be taught religious theories instead of scientific ones. This is one of the reasons why the majority of Americans still believe in Creationism. Over 300 US schools teach creationism and receive taxpayer money via school vouchers. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that state-funding of religious education is constitutional in the case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, despite being a clear violation of the 1st amendment. However, 35 states have Blaine Amendments that prohibit public funding of religious education.

We have so-called “sin tax” on products like alcohol and cigarettes, American currency is inscribed “in God we trust,” politicians get elected based on their alleged beliefs in God and dogma, and we swear on Bibles in US court. These are but a few examples of the myriad of interconnections between Church and state.

In some regions of the world the situation is even worse. Being an atheist is punishable by death in religious dictatorships, such as in Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In some “schools” in these countries, they only have one book, and it is a religious one. This is incredibly dangerous because while these books do have a few morals to teach us, they also have hate, dogma, misogyny, and myth in them.

The scientific method can explain why just about everything occurs, and yet so many people still cling to their supernatural explanations because these powerful institutions and the people who run them are so adept at manipulation. Our supernatural explanations (religious and otherwise) can be very sensitive issues. They can become desperate convictions, resulting in conflict and rash, impulsive decisions when the only line of communication people have with God is in our heads. Whether or not there is a God is almost irrelevant. Average religious people must acknowledge there are mentally disturbed people who believe God is talking to them when this is not the case and they use this “communication” to justify atrocities. This could not happen if there was broader acceptance of science. The irony is that scientific technology is applied and used every day without a second thought by people who say they do not believe in the most basic, scientific principles. But scientific laws exist whether we believe in them or not.

Religion is the oldest controlling influence. It was first created to answer questions we did not have the correct answers to. The cause of all events was first attributed to supernatural forces because there was so much around us that we could not explain. Eventually, the beliefs we formed about these supernatural forces became sacred issues we took very personally, and many were willing to die to defend them, and many did because their beliefs predictably conflicted. The ancient rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia took advantage of this to concentrate their power. Many of the first rulers of governments claimed to be close to Gods or Gods themselves and this was the main reason people listened to them and let them rule. The same is true today. Some leaders pretend to be Godly or else close to God in order to manipulate others. Many positions of power within organized religions and governments also only subsist because of each other, and it is tremendously dangerous that they do.

The calamitous reality is that if the institutions that control us are not stopped, they will destroy us completely either through pollution and environmental exploitation or by waging world war with nuclear weaponry. If they do not destroy us, they will at the very least continue to completely redefine what it means to be human in putrid ways. If the most misanthropic and ecocidal leaders of these institutions had their way, we would just be mindless, indistinguishable drones, constantly producing, consuming, and fighting for the benefit of the richest and most powerful few whilst always praying for change. While our future is uncertain, the least we can do is resist this in any way we can.

This book will explore the history of these institutions and in so doing make the case for the abolition of government, fiat currency, for-profit corporations, religious hierarchy, corporate media, capitalism, borders, and wage slavery. It will also provide historical and some contemporary examples of anarchy, armed resistance to state and corporate tyranny, sabotage of destructive corporate operations, voluntary, horizontal organization from the bottom up, mutual aid, free exchange of information, resource-based economies, social currencies, gift economies, and collective control over the means of production and distribution organized by need and ability. If we manage to break free of these oppressive institutions, human relations would be radically different. We could be better to one another and have reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationships instead of so many lop-sided exploitative and transactional relationships. We could be happier. Our forests could grow back. Species on the brink of extinction could return. Our air, water, and soil could become cleaner, and we could regain the balance we’ve lost with nature. No one can predict the future, but I hope it’s possible still.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-pollution-deaths-climate-change.html

[2]Deborah Hardoon: An economy for the 99%. January 16, 2017. Oxfam International. <<https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-99>>

[3]Deborah Hardoon: An economy for the 99%. January 16, 2017. Oxfam International. <<https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-99>>

[4] Agorist, Matt: In 2014, Police Killed Nearly Twice as Many Americans than Mass Shooters Combined Since 1982. The Free Thought Project. June 22nd 2015. <<http://thefreethoughtproject.com/2014-police-killed-americans-mass-shooters-combined-1982/#JZqOMJr2PhYrTA4k.99>>

[5] Syrmopoulos, Jay: A U.S. Citizen is 58 Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist. The Free Thought Project. March 7, 2015:

<<http://thefreethoughtproject.com/u-s-citizens-58-times-killed-police-terrorists/>>

[6] Brian A. Reaves, Ph.D.: Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008. BJS. July 2011 <<http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/csllea08.pdf>>

[7]Andrea M. Burch: Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003-2009 – Statistical Tables. BJS. November 2011. <<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf>>

[8] UNODC: “Prison Settings.” October 12^th 2010. PDF.

[9]Loretta E. Lynch: Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems. December 2015. BJS. <<2014. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/249799.pdf>>

[10]US DOJ, Civil Rights Division: Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. Page 58. March 4, 2015. <<https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/department-of-justice-report-on-the-ferguson-mo-police-department/1435/>>

[11] David Murphey and P. Mae Cooper: Parents Behind Bars: What Happens to Their Children? Child Trends. October 2015. <<https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-42ParentsBehindBars.pdf>>

[12] The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2010. Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts. <<http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2010/collateralcosts1pdf.pdf>>

[13] Walk Free Foundation, Global Slavery Index, 2014.

[14] Nima Elbagir, et. al: People for sale: Where lives are auctioned for $400. 11/14/2017. CNN. <<http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/africa/libya-migrant-auctions/index.htm>>

[15]Terrence McNally: There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History. Alternet. August 24, 2009. https://www.alternet.org/story/142171/there_are_more_slaves_today_than_at_any_time_in_human_history

[16] As an example in Indiana in 2016, Connie Lawson, the Indiana Secretary of State ordered state troops to intimidate black voters at their houses and raid a registration operation intended to register minorities because some of the voter information allegedly didn’t match up with state records

[17]
Uggen, C., Larson, L., & Shannon, S. (2016). “6 million lost voters: State-level estimates of felony disenfranchisement”, 2016. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.

[18]Chomsky, Noam: Hopes and Prospects, (2010) pg 17.

[19]Jeffery D. Sachs: The fatal expense of American imperialism. Boston Globe. 10/30/16. <<http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the-fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html>>

[20]“ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY PERSONNEL STRENGTHS BY REGIONAL AREA AND BY COUNTRY” DoD. 6/30/09. <<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/126/126194_hst0906.pdf>>

[21]<<http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/reports/documents/rpt655_FY11.xls>>

[22] Gord Hill: 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, pg. 6, PM Press, 2009, and Woodow Wilson Borah, “America as a Model: The Demographic Impact of European Expansion Upon the Non-European World”, in Actas y Memorias XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Mexico, 1962.

[23] The Pew Charitable Trusts: “One in 100 Behind Bars in America in 2008” January 26 2008, Pg. 6. Print.

[24]2015 Crime in the United Stated: Persons Arrested. FBI. <<https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/persons-arrested/persons-arrested>>

[25] Bernadette Rabuy, et. al: Detaining The Poor. May 2016. <<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/DetainingThePoor.pdf, page 2.>>

[26] Highest to Lowest – Pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners. Prison Studies. http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/pre-trial-detainees?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All

[27] Mark Wilding: Fining People $1,500 for Being Homeless Is a New Low for London. VICE. 6/4/15. <<https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gkne3/criminalising-the-homeless-is-a-new-low-for-london-733>>

[28] Chuch Collins and Josh Hoxie: Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us. December 1, 2015. Institute for Policy Studies. <<https://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/>>

[29]Deborah Hardoon: An economy for the 99%. January 16, 2017. Oxfam International. <<https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-99>>

[30]Annalyn Censky: Americans make up half of the world’s richest 1%. January 4, 2012. CNN. <<http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/>>

[31] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/michael-bloomberg-news-service-investigate-backlash

[32] The Opinion Research Business International reported on 14 September 2007 that the US war in Iraq has claimed 1,220,580 lives since 2003.

[33]Akwesasne Notes, Volume 9, No. 4, 1977.

[34] Gord Hill: 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, pg. 13, PM Press, 2009.

Tools of Control Part One

A Book about How Four Growing Institutions Control Us and How We Can Fight Them for Justice, Freedom, Autonomy, Sustainability, Biodiversity, and Human and Ecological Well-being.

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