CONFRONTING GODZILLA (Corporatocracy) (PART A)

Confronting Godzilla (Corporatocracy) — Part A
Calvin Mulligan, Futurescapes21C

Original written September 5, 2017, Posted January 29, 2018. All rights reserved
 
The truth today, however, is that the United States is neither a democracy nor a republic. Americans are ruled by a corporatocracy: a partnership of “too-big-to-fail” corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials. – Bruce E. Levine1
 
DAPL and Standing Rock
Is it a case of life imitating art or art imitating life? In the long running cartoon TV series, The Simpsons, the sinister Charles Montgomery (“Monty”) Burns is the embodiment of the dark instincts of corporate America. Mr. Burns, a shriveled specimen of a human being who bears a striking resemblance to Nathan Rothschild, is the owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and Homer Simpson’s boss. A trademark Burns response to perceived threats is ordering his assistant to “release the hounds” allowing his vicious guard dogs to attack intruders, enemies or even invited guests. As to his modus operandi, Burns “uses his power and wealth to do whatever he wants, usually without regard for consequences and without interference from the authorities” (Wikipedia).
 
Some encounters between the two sides in the Standing Rock – Dakota Access Oil Pipeline standoff were ominously Burns-esque in nature. The protest was launched against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), by a reported 500 Native American tribes. They considered the project to be an assault on sacred ancestral sites and environmental threats to the Missouri River.
 
Even though the US Army Corps of Engineers denied the permit for building the pipeline under the Missouri River last November, an executive order signed by President Trump the following January instructed the army corps of engineers to “review and approve” the project “in an expedited manner.” After the final easement was granted in late February of this year, “the move was enthusiastically greeted by Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s developer.2
 
In September of 2016, the Monty Burns-Simpsons parallel at Standing Rock was complete with its “release the hounds” moment. Protestors complained that in one clash with the security firm employed by Energy Transfer Partners, they were pepper sprayed and bitten by their guard dogs.3 
 
It’s been 30 years since the publication of Our Common Future offered the world a more enlightened approach to economic development.4 We were led to believe that we had entered the era of Sustainable economic development, one that would see a more judicious integration of economic objectives with social and environmental priorities. Are we supposed to believe that the “resolution” of the DAPL-Standing Rock dispute in some way fulfilled the promise of Our Common Future? Or, did it merely expose the willingness of the federal government to subordinate social and environmental interests to those of Big oil and its financial partners?
 
In weighing this question, consider among other things, that the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners donated $100,000 to the Trump Campaign, the Republican National Committee and State Republican Parties.5 And, Kinder Morgan reportedly paid $115,000 to Massachusetts state police to stop protests against the DAPL pipeline.6 More recently, the Dakota Access Pipeline developer has sued Greenpeace and a number of other environmental groups. Energy Transfer partners alleging the group, engaged in “racketeering and defamation that increased the cost of construction by at least $300 million.”7
 
The tyranny of corporatocracy
There’s hard evidence that US citizens have lost their influence over American politics and policies. A Princeton-Northwestern Universities study examined1,800 US policies enacted between 1981 and 2002 and compared them to the expressed preferences of average Americans. The researchers found that an economic elite dominates America.
 
… economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.8
 
The DAPL-Standing rock outcome wasn’t surprising in the least. What it did do was confirm the stark reality that a corporatocracy governs the American Empire. A corporatocracy is defined as “the rule by an oligarchy of corporate elites through manipulation of a formal democracy”9 Robert Gore sees it as more than a matter of large corporations exercising undue influence over the government. He argues that America’s large corporations and its government have merged. Gore adds that while the two retain their own distinct legal structures and managements, it’s no longer possible to separate them or delineate their individual contours.
 
Gore struggles to find adequate descriptors of the product of this forbidden marriage, settling on “big,” “rapacious,” “intrusive” and “conjoined blob.”10  It’s reminiscent of the language Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine used to describe the investment bank, Goldman Sachs. In Taibbi vernacular, it is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”11 The commonality mirrored in these two descriptions is the concern that large corporate entities interests are preying on America.
 
The analysis of American author and lecturer, Marianne Williamson is no less blunt. She labels this new form of governance as “corporate totalitarianism.”12 Political philosopher, Christopher Wolin differentiates this form of totalitarian from its Stalinist and Nazi predecessors, and describes it as “inverted totalitarianism.” As he explains, this is a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and economics trumps politics.
 
Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state. Our inverted totalitarianism pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, but it has effectively seized all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.13
 
Ultimately, Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism, Williamson’s corporate totalitarianism and Gore’s corporatocracy imply the same kind of governance. The forbidden marriage of government and corporate interests has birthed something ugly and oppressive. As we come to better understand the psychology and appetites of this beast, we will discover it is every bit as dangerous as the fictitious out-of-control freak of nature, Godzilla.
 
A slow-motion coup
So what happened? How did it come about that a political Godzilla rules the American Empire? Graham Vanbergen contends that the “creeping colonization of public life” by corporations resulted in a “slow motion coup d’etat.’ He adds that globalization has continually compounded corporate power and consolidated its influence on global governance.” Government for its part, ignored signs an advancing coup. The warning signs that should have prompted corrective action appeared in a year 2000 study by Corporate Watch, Global Policy Forum and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). The study found:

• 200 of the approximately 40,000 worldwide corporations had global reach and influence;

• The top 200 companies were bigger than the combined economies of 182 countries and wielded twice the economic influence of 80 per cent of all humanity;

• As worker wages stagnated, corporate profits soared and wealth concentrated; and

• Corporate concentration was greatest in the trading, banking, automotives, retail and electronics sectors.14

 In 2011, three Swiss mathematicians published the results of their efforts to map the network of connections between transnational corporations (TNCs). Their goal was to gain insights into the structure of economic power. Working from a database of more than 43,060 TNCs, they isolated a “super-entity” of 147 tightly- knit companies at the core of the TNC network. This super entity controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. All but one of the top 50 within this node were financial institutions.15
 
For its part, the financial sector, made a determined effort to free itself of its regulatory chains in the mid-nineties. Susan George describes the campaign. 
 
From the mid-1990s, the largest American banking, securities, insurance and accounting transnational corporations joined forces and, employing 3000 people, spent $5 billion to get rid of all the New Deal laws passed under the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s – the very laws that had protected the American economy for over sixty years. Through this collective lobbying push, they won total freedom to remove any money-losing assets from their balance-sheets and move them into “shadow” banks that appeared nowhere on their balance sheets. They became free to create and trade hundreds of billions worth of toxic derivative products, such as bundles of sub-prime mortgages, with no regulation whatever. 16 
 
A “liberated” banking sector has come to wield enormous political influence in recent years. Consider for example, the Wikileaks revelation that Citigroup bank chose Obama’s 2008 cabinet.17 Goldman Sachs is considered to be even more of a political powerhouse. Katherine Fisk describes Goldman Sachs’ reach into the Oval Office. 
 
They are the power in the Oval Office, where what Goldman says determines policy. The financial advisors behind the Vatican. The funders of fast track to get the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement through Congress. They are the hand that pulls the strings on both the Democratic and Republican nominees for US President, who is just the next “crisis actor” that will sit in the White House, while He Who Would Be King steers from behind.17
 
Wall Street’s dominance of the White House didn’t end with the Obama era. Despite Trump’s criticisms of Wall Street throughout his campaign, he promptly surrounded himself with Goldman Sachs alumni once elected.18
 
The mega corporate invasion and ascent to governance finds something of an equivalent in a viral infection. The corporate virus first invades and acquires control of its government host, and then, once established, systematically feeds off public resources. The US government’s annual bill for corporate welfare is $100 billion. It comes in many forms – grants, tax credits, bail-outs and other types of assistance. The arguments for and against aside, it’s noteworthy that Corporate welfare disproportionately favours big business.” Of an estimated $18 trillion awarded between 2000 and 2015, 99 per cent went to large companies and 78% went to 12 large US and foreign banks.19 Now that gives new meaning to the phrase “taking care of business,” doesn’t it?
 
It can be difficult for members of the public to follow the machinations of the ruling corporate powers behind the coup. Typically, they are drip fed the news an issue at a time, which makes it inherently difficult to grasp the big picture. Those seeking critical analyses must penetrate the fog of corporate PR, journalistic puffery, censorship and disinformation. And the wall of secrecy that screens the public eye from the dealings of government with their corporate friends further impairs their scrutiny.
 
Government’s long retreat
As the term, slow motion coup d’etat implies, the conquest of government didn’t occur over night. Ralph Nader, in an interview with Chris Hedges, suggests the creeping coup began around 1970. He links it to a decision by the Democratic Party to aggressively compete with Republicans in the electoral fund raising competition for corporate dollars. From that point on, the Democrats were more intent on courting the favour of big business than putting the brakes on its excesses.20
 
It should also be said that the coup wasn’t completely a matter of the raging ambitions of big banks and other TNCs. Government was a facilitator of the coup. Looking back on my own career, much of it of working with various levels of government, it’s clear how trends in government management opened the doors to corporate encroachment. Five of the most popular and enduring management trends in government over the past thirty five years have been:

• Recurring drives for increased operational efficiency frequently leading to reductions in public resources assigned to delivery of services, the monitoring of industry activities and regulatory enforcement;

• Pursuit of private sector-public sector partnerships (“Triple P) in service delivery and infrastructure development;

• Privatization of government programs (widely celebrated and “sold” in Maggie Thatcher’s day) 

• Recurring de-regulation campaigns with some aimed at industry self-regulation with a stated intention of fostering increased innovation and international competitiveness; and

• The shifting of scientific research once financed and carried out in the public sector to private sector corporations.

The effect of the widespread adoption of these management approaches and strategies over a period of decades is obvious. Government’s regulatory role eroded as responsibilities and resources were shifted to the private sector. In reality then, government leaders and public servants were respectively, champions of and collaborators in the power shift. Whether they clearly demarcated and enforced limits on corporate encroachment is another matter. When it comes to the management of natural resources, for example, Colin Todhunter challenges the idea that profit-driven transnationals have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets.
 
“There is the premise that water, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful and wholly corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.
 
Todhunter argues that these natural assets (“the commons”) belong to everyone and their stewardship is a matter of the common interest. As such they should to be managed by local people “assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf.”21 When governments fail to protect the commons, preferring instead to serve corporate interests, we get the DAPL-Standing Rock kind of outcome. This brings us to the pivotal matter of accountability.
 
The broken chain of accountability
One can think of healthy democracies as systems characterized by a continuous chain of accountability linking “the people”, governments and corporations. When that chain is broken,  it has far reaching consequences. David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, puts it this way:
 
The healthy function of society requires that governments be accountable to the electorate and that corporations in turn be accountable to democratic governments. Our ability to deal with every other issue of our time — from climate disruption to inequality to violence — depends on that accountability.22
 
Neither governments nor corporations appear to be particularly concerned about the problem. So even as concerned citizens call for more accountability and transparency from transnational corporatations (TNCs), the corporatoracy acts to reduce both further and slam the shades down. In June 2016, Vanbergen reported efforts in the EU parliament to criminalize whistle blowing.  
 
Just a few weeks earlier, we discover that the European Parliament voted in favour of the “Trade Secrets Protection Directive – a law that gives corporations alarming new superpowers to prosecute and criminalize whistleblowers, journalists, and news organizations that publish leaked internal documents.23
 
This EU parliament’s move to criminalize whistleblowing reminds me of the attempts by the US livestock industry to do the same in several US states using what’s were dubbed by critics as “ag gag” laws. Such legislation is designed to criminalize undercover investigations of livestock abuse. Three states introduced ag gag laws in 2011 and 2012 and a flurry of other bills followed in other states in the years following.24 A battle that started in the nineties regarding the issue of public transparency continues in 2017 producing both wins and losses for animal welfare activists.25
 
David Korten explains how the globalization of the operations by TNC’s made it even more difficult to hold them to account. In some respects globalization untethered TNCs from national allegiances and regulations.
 
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest. It may be chartered in the United States, park its profits in Bermuda to avoid taxes, contract with sweatshops in Bangladesh, sell its products in France, and be a subsidiary of a parent corporation headquartered in Brazil. In effect, it is stateless and operates as a power unto itself, and has no concern for the interests of any people or place.26
 
Transparency and accountability are areas where PR double speak prevails. While governments and corporate powers talk a good game in terms of their commitment, but their actions say something else. There have simply been too many counter moves like those described earlier to take the jive talk seriously. And the oft stated concern for the protection of whistleblowers is an equal pretence. There are simply too many stories of whistleblowers whose careers were terminated and their lives turned into a living hell, or worse yet, ended under suspicious circumstances to believe the official party of those corporations vested in   the corporatocracy game.
 
Godzilla’s delusions
One of the things that makes the corporatocracy particularly dangerous is its delusions. There are troubling signs that Godzilla suffers from some kind of narcissistic personality disorder. The grandiose “feeding the world” sloganeering of Big Ag transnationals, for example, suggests they are either misguided, propagandizing or suffering from a kind of god complex.27 Here’s a reality check.

• More than 50% of the agricultural exports to its top 20 importers were for animal product or meat;
• 2.3% of the world’s most undernourished countries’ diet comes from exports from the United States; and
• Less than 1% of US agricultural exports went to the world’s 19 most hungry or undernourished countries.28

And then there’s the fertilizer manufacturer, JR Simplot, who thinks that it is “Bringing earth’s resources to life.”29 Really? Now there’s a serious god complex! Someone should tell the brain trust at Simplot that 1 square metre of rich soil can harbour up to a billion living organisms. I won’t even bother with Big Pharma which appears to be pretty busy inventing imaginary health conditions.
 
The marketing mavens at Coke also occasionally drift off into la la land. Author Jill Richardson flagged an ad featuring a young girl who harbours a desire to grow a garden for the world. She grows up and goes to works for Coca Cola and says that she’s fulfilling that dream. How does that work? Richardson provides the reality check. First choosing to drink Coke isn’t helping the poor. At best, Coke is a sugary drink that provides no nutrition. People may drink it because they enjoy the taste.30 That’s it.
 
There are also clear signs of co-dependency in the government-Big Ag/Agribusiness- industry marriage. The most telling sign is the tendency on the part of government to serve as an enabler and defender of corporate ag’s abuses of the public trust. It’s a deeply disturbing development with a chilling effect on public employees wishing to do the right thing as good stewards of the public trust.
 
A survey of 1,300 USDA scientists in 2017 found that nearly 10% of them believe superiors have tampered with their work. The research of one USDA scientist revealed that a lucrative pesticide might be harming pollinators such as bees. When this researcher published a report cautioning against use of department-approved pesticides, he found his career began to fall apart.31 In short, questioning the official, corporately-approved narrative can be career-limiting.
 
Canadian scientists could identity with their USDA counterparts. During the administration of former PM, Stephen Harper, many Canadian scientists took to the streets to protest their muzzling under restrictive media relations policies aimed at message control. A number of specific examples are cited in a paper entitled: Muzzling Civil Servants: A Threat to Democracy?.32
 
Godzilla’s god complex has taken on new and alarming dimensions of late. Major Corporations are now becoming arbitrars of public morality. Peter Hassan cites the example of the domain hosting company GoDaddy.com which booted neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer from its servers on August 13, 2017 in the wake of a deadly antifa-alt right confrontation in Charlottesville, Virginia. GoDaddy decided that a Daily Stormer article trashing the victim of the clash was offensive.             
 
Sometimes it’s a case of telecoms or on-line media services responding to pressure from an aggrieved political faction seeking to extract some form of “justice” in response to a perceived wrong.
 
Fox News cancelled “The O’Reilly Factor” in April after advertisers pulled their money from the show amidst a slew of sexual harassment accusations against host Bill O’Reilly. The advertisers pulled the ads following an intense pressure campaign from left-wing activists who claimed the advertisers had a moral obligation to defund “The O’Reilly Factor.”33
 
The dangers of corporatocracy-sanctioned censorship by monopolistic telecoms should be readily apparent. The mechanisms for suppression of free speech by Google and Facebook in favour of the politics du jour, for example, are in place and being applied with new rigour. Jordan Peterson is a professor at the University of Toronto, who has dared to challenge the fascistic tendencies of post-modernism inherent in Canada’s gender legislation, among other things. In August 2017, he was surprised to discover that Google had arbitrarily blocked him from his YouTube account with no explanation. Peterson rightly finds the treatment worrying.34
 
He’s not alone. It appears that Google is now censoring videos deemed “too politically incorrect or not advertiser friendly.” Once Google demonetizes a targeted YouTube site, the uploader cannot make money from its content. Former US Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul and his YouTube Analysis Channel, the Ron Paul Liberty Report was abruptly targeted. Julian Assange of Wikileaks suggests Dr. Paul was punished for his recent criticism of Donald Trump for sending additional troops into Afghanistan. He labels this “economic censorship.”35
 
Graham Vanbergen’s article: “The truth war is being lost to a global censorship apparatus called Google” is disturbing. The article describes how social media has become a tool of the CIA, and how Google has become a global censor, skewing searches toward politically correct sites. The stench of corporately administered censorship is discernible in an April 25/17 statement by Ben Gomes, Google’s VP of Engineering. Gomes stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content.” Vanbergen estimated the loss of traffic to just 13 non-mainstream web sites following the changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols.
 
…these losses of readership in the last six months, from highs to lows amounted to a colossal 30.4 million unique visitors a month. I can’t vouch for other websites but at TruePublica the average visitor reads 1.84 pages per visit. At this calculation over 55 million pages of content a month are being withheld from just the 13 websites listed above. It is not possible to come to any other conclusion that Google has blatantly been involved in an act of global censorship.36
 
Big Brother giveth and Big Brother  taketh away. Once upon a time, Google enlarged our world through its powerful search service. Now, the Ministry of Truth has declared the boundaries of our world of information shall be reduced in accordance with Big Brother’s political preferences. Are you getting claustrophobic yet?
 
Godzilla’s anti-democratic tendencies
One of the more serious charges against corporatocracy is that it’s anti-democratic in nature. Ralph Nader contends that today’s international trade agreements are, in effect, democracy-reversing.
 
[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don’t stick to trade…they colonize environmental labor, and consumer issues of grave concern (in terms of health safety, and livelihoods too) to many, many hundreds of millions of people – and they do that by subordinating consumer, environmental, and labor issues to the imperatives and the supremacy of international commerce.  
 
Nader argues that this is exactly the reverse of how democratic societies have advanced. Specifically, they subordinate the profiteering drive of companies to such things as higher environmental health standards, abolition of child labour, and the right of worker to fair labour standards. In a truly democratic system, the onus would be corporations to demonstrate that they weren’t harming consumers with monopoly powers, damaging the environment or compromising the rights of workers. But that order has been turned upside down.
 
…its workers and consumers and environments that have to kneel before this giant pedestal of commercial trade and prove that they are not, in a whole variety of ways, impeding international commerce…so this is the road to dictatorial devolution of democratic societies…37 

Julian Assange of Wikileaks has added his voice to Nader’s, regarding the TTP. Assange affirms that the TPP, the largest international economic trade agreement goes ever far beyond trade.
 
Only five of the 29 chapters are about traditional trade. The others are about regulating the Internet and what information …Internet service providers have to collect. …It’s about regulating labor, what labor conditions can be applied, regulating, whether you can favor local industry, regulating the hospital healthcare system, privatization of hospitals. So, essentially, every aspect of the modern economy, even banking services, are in the TPP.38 

The negotiation process for international trade deals remains remarkably deaf to citizens’ interests and concerns. Verbergen recalls that Cecilia Malmstrom, the leading EU trade commissioner for TTIP trade negotiations was asked why she continued to promote the deal in the face of massive public opposition. Her response was telling: “I do not take my mandate from the European people.”39 Meanwhile, US opponents of the TTP were dismissed as “protectionists” for their opposition. There’s some irony in that charge as opponents were concerned that elements of the deal would “undermine the free flow of goods and services by expanding some protectionist anti-competitive policies.” Doctors Without Borders, for example, was critical of the monopoly protections and patents the deal would create for big pharmaceutical companies and their products.40 Now who is being protectionist?
 
In this chapter, we have pulled back the curtain and looked the beast in the eye. As a result of a corporate coup in the mid-nineties, the American Empire is now ruled by a monstrous corporatocracy. The prevailing myth however, is that America is a model of democracy to the world. The corporatocracy perpetuates the delusion, of course as a cover for its operations. This predatory shape-shifting creature is dangerously unaccountable and out of control. Its reach is global,  it’s nature instinctively controlling, its operation parasitic and its mental health unstable.
 
There’s more to learn about the corporatocracy named Godzilla. In the next chapter, we will examine the criminal nature of the Corporatocracy and where its insatiable appetite for power and profits has taken us geopolitically. And then we will turn to the urgent matter of how Godzilla can be recaptured.

Endnotes
1 The myth of US democracy and the reality of U.S. corporatocracy, Huffington Post, May 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/the-myth-of-us-democracy-corporatocracy_b_836573.html
 
2 Dakota Access Pipeline protest site is cleared, CNN, February 24, 2017 http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-evacuation-order/index.html
 
3 Dakota Access Pipeline company attacks protestors with dogs and mace, Common Dreams, September 24, 2016, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/04/dakota-access-pipeline-company-attacks-protesters-dogs-and-mace
 
4 Our Common Future, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Common_Future
 
5 Trump’s greenlighting of Keystone and DAPL is a powerplay that won’t pay create jobs, The Slatest, January 24, 2017, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/24/trump_s_green_lighting_of_keystone_and_dapl_is_a_power_play_that_won_t_create.html
 
6 Kinder Morgan paid $115,000 to Mass. State police to step protests against pipeline, Blacklisted News, August 21, 2017, http://www.blacklistednews.com/Kinder_Morgan_Paid_%24115,000_To_Mass._State_Police_To_Stop_Protests_Against_Pipeline/60447/0/38/38/Y/M.html
 
7 Dakota Access Pipeline owner sues Greenpeace for ‘criminal activity’, NPR, August 22, 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/22/545310247/dakota-access-pipeline-owner-sues-greenpeace-for-criminal-activity
 
8 The US is an oligarchy, study finds, The Telegraph, April 16, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html
 
9 Corporatocracy, Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Corporatocracy
 
10 The Corporatocracy, by Robert Gore, Straight Line Logic, April 28, 2017, https://straightlinelogic.com/2017/04/28/the-corporatocracy-by-robert-gore/
 
11 The Great American Bubble Machine, Rolling Stone, April 5, 2010, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
 
12 Corporate Totalitarianism, or not, Huffington Post.com, March 2, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-williamson/corporate-totalitarianism_b_9361826.html
 
13 Sheldon Walin and inverted totalitarianism, Chris Hedges, Truthdig, November 2, 2015, https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sheldon-wolin-and-inverted-totalitarianism/
 
14 The rise of the corporatocracy, Graham Vanbergen, Information Clearing House, June 21, 2016, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44929.htm
 
15 Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world, New Scientist, October 19, 2011, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/
 
16 The rise of the corporatocracy, Graham Vanbergen, Information Clearing House, June 21, 2016, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44929.htm
 
17 Citigroup chose Obama’s 2008 cabinet, Wikileaks document reveals, Global Research, October 1, 2016, http://www.globalresearch.ca/citigroup-chose-obamas-2008-cabinet-wikileaks-document-reveals/5551327
 
17 How Goldman Sachs rules the world and gets away with it, Veterans Today, March 21, 2016, http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/03/21/how-goldman-sachs-rules-the-world-and-gets-away-with-it/
 
18 List of Goldman Sachs alumni in Donald Trump’s administration, Heavy, January 5, 2017, http://heavy.com/news/2017/01/donald-trump-goldman-sachs-drain-swamp-steve-bannon-steven-mnuchin-gary-cohn-jay-clayton/
 
19 Corporate welfare: How big business lives off government subsidy, Blacklisted News, August 14, 2017, http://www.blacklistednews.com/Corporate_Welfare%3A_How_Big_Business_Lives_Off_Government_Subsidy/60316/0/38/38/Y/M.html
 
20 Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader: History of the corporate coup d’etat, Dandelion Salad, November 3, 2015, https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/chris-hedges-and-ralph-nader-history-of-the-corporate-coup-detat/
 
21 Soil, Monsanto and the Agribusiness giants: Conning the world with snake oil and doughnuts, Global Research, August 24, 2017, http://www.globalresearch.ca/soil-monsanto-and-the-agribusiness-giants-conning-the-world-with-snake-oil-and-doughnuts/5605487
 
22 How the power imbalance between corporations, governments and people prevents sustainable solutions, Wake Up World, March 28, 2017, https://wakeup-world.com/2017/03/28/how-the-power-imbalance-between-corporations-governments-and-people-prevents-sustainable-solutions/
 
23 The rise of the corporatocracy, The European financial review, June 20, 2016, http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6074
 
24 2013 was the year bills to criminalize animal cruelty videos failed, The Salt, npr, December 27, file://localhost/2013, http/::www.npr.org:sections:thesalt:2013:12:19:255549796:2013-was-the-year-every-new-ag-gag-bill-failed
 
25 Judge overturn Utah’s ‘ag-gag’ ban on under-cover filming at farms, The two way, npr, July 8,
2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/08/536186914/judge-overturns-utahs-ag-gag-ban-on-undercover-filming-at-farms
 
26 How the power imbalance between corporations, governments and the people prevents sustainable solutions, The Event Chronicle, March 27, 2017,

27 Why Big Ag won’t feed the world, The Atlantic, January 20, 2010, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/01/why-big-ag-wont-feed-the-world/33666/
 
28 Does Big AG “Feed the World”, or are such slogans just clever public relations?, The Farmarian, November 4, 2016, http://www.farmarian.com/does-big-ag-feed-the-world-or-are-such-slogans-public-relations/
 
29 Simplot.com, http://simplot.com/  
 
30 Soda doesn’t ‘feed the world’, Jill Richardson, Other Words, http://otherwords.org/soda-doesnt-feed-the-world/
 
31 Some USDA scientists say their work has been tampered with – Bangor Daily News, August 31, 2017, http://bangordailynews.com/2017/04/21/news/nation/some-usda-scientists-say-their-work-has-been-tampered-with-maybe-for-political-reasons/maybe for political reasons,
 
32 Muzzling civil servants: A threat to democracy, Environmental Law Clinic, University of Victoria, Clayton Greenwood, February 2013,
http://www.elc.uvic.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Muzzling-Civil-Servants_2012-03-04_2013Feb.pdf 

33. The O’Reilly Factor: cancelled; Tucker Carlson Tonight to replace Fox News series, TVseriesfinale, April 19, 2017 https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/oreilly-factor-cancelled-fox-news-channel/

34 “I’m very worried” Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson discuss Google, YouTube suspension, YouTube, August 24, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmjuptpDsA
 
35 YouTube “economically censors” Ron Paul, labels videos “not suitable” for all advertisers. Zero Hedge, August 27, 2017, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-27/youtube-economically-censors-ron-paul-labels-videos-not-suitable-all-advertisers
 
36 The truth war is being lost to a global censorship apparatus called Google, Global Research, August 27, 2017, 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-truth-war-is-being-lost-to-a-global-censorship-apparatus-called-google/5602578?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
 
37 Ralph Nader quotes, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/47237.Ralph_Nader
 
38 Julian Assange on the Trans- Pacific Partnership: Secretive deal isn’t about trade, but corporate control, Democracy Now, May 27, 2015, https://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/27/julian_assange_on_the_trans_pacific
 
39 The rise of the corporatocracy, The European Financial Review, June 20, 2016, http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6074
 
40 More than 50 groups call on US Congress to stop TPP, the worst trade deal ever for access to affordable medicines, Doctors Without Borders, April 12, 2016, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/more-50-groups-call-us-congress-stop-tpp-worst-trade-deal-ever-access-affordable-medicines
​
(c) Futurescapes21C, 2018 All rights reserved