Deep Politics: Institutionalized Corruption at the Top and the Corporate Assault

[MikeWB]

Deep Politics:
Institutionalized Corruption at the Top
and the Corporate Assault on Democracy
K. L. Roberts

An Introduction to "Deep Politics"

"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist."
Charles Baudelaire


DC insider Mike Lofgren has said that "There's a shadow government running the country, and it's
not up for re-election."
Defense expert William Arkin says that a "terrified government is destroying the constitution."
But neither of these individuals ever gets around to naming any names. From a reading of their
accounts, one could only conclude that no actual, specific human beings are responsible, only
vague institutions like Wall Street , the Military Industrial Complex, and a "terrified government".
Obviously, however, institutions are made up – entirely – of human beings. And the good news is
that sociologists know, to some degree, who they are.
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In this white paper we're going to introduce some key players to you, and we're also going to tell
you what they've been up to the last few years. (Unfortunately, it could hardly be more
alarming.)



One faction of the "shadow government" is comprised of "defense" contractors and revolvingdoor,
ex-government "neo-cons" a la Dick Cheney. Another faction is made up of executives of
transnational financial institutions, corporations and banks. All are politically active; but, as we'll
see, there exists an inner core which has long focused on the executive branch. More peripheral
organizations, though related, and certainly significant, have other priorities.
The primary aim of this document is to provide a quick and very rough introduction to this inner
core, which is largely (though, of course, not exclusively) responsible for many of the problems
that concern most Americans. To do this we'll focus on the most tightly-integrated core players
only. Much of what you'll discover will shock you, so we've made this paper self-documenting.
But to keep it readable, we've moved most of that documentation into appendices, with the
exception of fairly extensive hyperlinking.
If you do want to learn more about individuals and organizations beyond the inner core – and you
really should – a terrific introduction is available from sociologist Peter Phillips of Project
Censored. Here's that link. And a good overview of the transnational financial framework is
available from David Korten here. You can find other relevant names named at another white
paper written by Phillips here.
The core faction in question is comprised of the CEOs of a relatively small group of cross-affiliated
corporations, including, crucially, media corporations. We'll refer to this Executive branch insider
clique as the Business Roundtable/Council on Foreign Relations Nexus. (Because that's a bit of a
mouthful, from this point forward we'll also just call it "the Nexus" or the "BRT/CFR Nexus".)
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We'll see that these corporations have long cultivated an intimate relationship with the Executive
branch (that is, the Presidency ) of the United States, as well as with the NSA and (previously
unknown) FBI mass-surveillance programs. And we'll also see that they are a key force behind the
"trade accord" known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Chris Hedges calls "the most
brazen corporate power grab in American history."
Because it would be easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees even in this sort of simplified
account, it should be stated clearly that the "brazen corporate power grab" Hedges is talking
about is, incredibly, like something straight out of a Bond movie: the CEOs and bankers involved
are seeking nothing less than total global political, economic, and military control by the owners
of transnational corporations and banks.
If it passes, the TPP will hand over to them a big chunk of what they want on a silver platter.
On now to the anatomy and physiology of the more domestic side of the nexus, the engineers of
this mad power grab.
Hold on to your hat. You are about to experience one wild ride into terra incognita.

The Least You Need to Know

Not everyone has time to read the entirety of a document of this length; and even those who do
have the time and interest may benefit from a quick overview, so here it is.

• The Executive Branch is entirely dominated by corporate interests, especially as
represented by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Business Roundtable
o There are four main organizational players
 The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
 The Business Roundtable (BRT)
 The American Bankers Association (ABA)
 The US Chamber of Commerce (USCoC)
o But of these four, two enjoy especially intimate access to the Executive
Branch
 The Council on Foreign Relations (headed up by David Rockefeller)
and
 The Business Roundtable
 And these two organizations are themselves strongly crossaffiliated

• This domination of the Executive Branch has been enabled by the corporate mass
media, which comprise a crucial subset of the Executive branch insider clique
o All of the corporate television broadcast media are also members of the
Council on Foreign Relations
o All of the headquarters of the television broadcast media are situated within
1.5 miles of each other in New York City, and the headquarters of the Council
on Foreign Relations is also situated within this same small Manhattan
neighborhood
• This domination has now resulted in the police and surveillance powers of the FBI
being laid at the doorstep of the BRT/CFR via a "public-private" partnership known as
the DSAC (Domestic Security Alliance Council)
o The leadership board of the DSAC is comprised primarily of BRT/CFR
corporations
o Member corporations of the DSAC are granted "Centralized access to security
information not only from the FBI, but from all federal government entities,
including the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the IRS, U.S. Coast
Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service"
 American media have almost entirely omitted news coverage of
the DSAC which, by itself, speaks volumes
• The secret NSA mass surveillance program was overseen by the Executive branch and
may also have originated with the BRT/CFR nexus that dominates it
o Many of those most responsible for the program under both the Bush and
Obama administrations are CFR members, and all of those with whom the
program necessarily originated are CFR affiliated in some way
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• The Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated in secret, with even Congress excluded,
focuses on prioritizing corporate interests over Congress and the courts, and on
establishing a secret tribunal in which governments can be sued by corporations for
unlimited amounts for an anticipated "loss of profits"– and many of the same
BRT/CFR corporations are centrally involved again
o The ideological roots of the secret tribunal (the so-called Investor-State
Dispute Settlement mechanism) lie with a book by Daniel Epstein of the
Rockefeller-founded University of Chicago
o The NAFTA/TPP legal framework was hammered out by the little-known
USCIB (US Council for International Business)
 USCIB corporations are, to a large extent, the same ones we've
seen affiliated with the BRT/CFR nexus – and they are also located in
the same Manhattan neighborhood as the CFR and the broadcast
media
o The TPP has been sought and promoted primarily by an organization known
as the US Coalition for TPP
 This organization is also largely comprised of the same BRT/CFR
corporations
• Militarized policing combined with spying has been advocated for by an organization
known, unsurprisingly, as the Manhattan Institute. This institute is also situated in the
same Manhattan neighborhood as the HQ of the CFR, the headquarters of the mass
media, and the headquarters of the USCIB. (For details, please see Appendix 5.)
• So: the domination of the Executive Branch of the US government has resulted in at
least one, and perhaps two, secret mass surveillance programs, in which spying on
American citizens is done for profit, and for the private, political benefit of
transnational corporations
• In the form of the TPP, it has also brought about what amounts to an attempt to
overthrow the entire legal framework of the United States government – it is, in effect
a corporate coup d'etat
• With the CFR/BRT nexus effectively in long-standing control of both the media and the
Executive Branch, it is hardly surprising to find, for example, the media nearly
excluding a non-CFR politician like Bernie Sanders from news coverage, while at the
same time extensively covering CFR members like Joe Biden and those closely related
to them, like Hillary Clinton





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"Some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of
democracy . . . . Democracy is only one way of constituting authority, and it is not necessarily a
universally applicable one."

The Crisis of Democracy
Trilateral Commission

The Corporate Media and the Council on Foreign Relations
One might think that anything on the scale of a global corporate takeover would, absolutely, be
front-page news. But if most of the news itself originates from within enormous media
conglomerates then that assumption would, obviously, be thrown seriously into doubt. (87% of
Americans get some news from television, and 24% prefer it to all other sources.) And, of course,
even the most informative news doesn't come labelled as manifestations of a corporate takeover.
It comes labelled instead as stories about, say, Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission, or
headlined as controversy over the Glass-Steagall act, or, though very rarely, the TPP.
Nevertheless, all such stories do mark the same trend.
So let's begin our introduction to the "shadow government" by having a closer look at its key, and
indeed essential, ally: the corporate broadcast media. (The print media are almost as bad, as
you'll see in Appendix 2.)


Continued in this PDF: https://cryptome.org/2016/08/deep-politics-rev4.pdf