Giants: The Global Power Elite – Book Review
By Jim Miles
(Giants: The Global Power Elite. Peter Phillips. Seven Stories Press, New York, 2018.)
Abby Martin’s interview with Peter Phillips was the instigator for reading Peter Phililips’ now slightly outdated but highly valuable work, “Giants – The Global Power Elite.” The interview is valuable unto itself and like all Abby Martin’s work is concise and pointed; it is a good place to start before reading the actual book. [1]
“Giants” is an examination of the few people within the global transnational capitalist class [TNC] where eight people (as of publication) have half the wealth and the top one percent have ninety percent of the wealth. The seventeen largest investment giants, consisting of 199 people (remember, at publication) controlled 41 trillion dollars, 50 trillion at the time of the interview, and who knows how much more now after all the injections of money in order to sustain the Covid economy.
Underneath that wealth, eighty percent of the world lives on $10 per day; one-half live on less than $2.50, and the bottom one-third live on less than $1.25 per day. 700 are malnourished while one-third of world food supplies are wasted each year for lack of profit.
The most significant NGO supporting all this is the Atlantic Council, a group of security and investment advisors who pushed out policy press releases followed by the corporate media putting it out as news, which is then picked up by other media, the CIA, and it becomes a circular reinforcement mechanism. There is a “massive penetration into media” of which 80 percent is pre-packaged by public relations firms. It is all weaponized for empire.
The Council on Foreign Relations is a governmental advisory board with “a long history of US expansionism, with the goal of solidifying the United States’s [sic] global hegemonic power” while paying “close attention to international financial policies.”
Empire of Control
This financial empire has its protectors. NATO, the US military, and many private security firms work around the world to service the TNC. “Giants” points out G4S as a major mercenary/security firm working in many areas including protection of Israeli settlements, prisons, and mercenary roles globally. In 2021 it was bought out by Allied Services, continuing the same roles, with 800 000 employees, the largest private firm in the world.
Beyond that, it becomes simply the role of the US military in all its parameters to keep the world ‘safe’ for the financial actions of the TNC: “The US military empire has long been the protector of global capitalism….permanent war as an economic relief valve for surplus capital is a vital part of comprehending capitalism in the world today.”
More than just war, “Failed states, manufactured civil wars, regime changes, and direct invasions/occupations are manifestations of the new world order requirements for protecting transnational capital.” The result is that the “private wealth is being used for the economic colonization and privatization of the public commons in complete disregard for human rights.” Yet arguably, an equal amount of public wealth is used to support the TNC with huge influxes of government money for direct purchases of equipment and services as well as simply to support companies that would otherwise be bankrupt.
Final Misgivings
Phillips’ research is extensive, and while Abby Martin’s video serves as an excellent summary, for the reader wanting the details – and this is where the book comes to the fore – there are numerous listings and cross-listings of the people involved and their business and government relationships.
Unfortunately, a very short “Letter to the Global Power Elite” puts a rather nasty twist on the topic. The letter starts with a two-paragraph laudatory honorific tribute to the TNC ending by saying, “you…the financial and policy core of global capitalism…have the power…to save the world from deadly inequality and pending economic or environmental chaos.” Were they being sarcastic in their congratulatory introduction?
This is the group that needs to be deconstructed, to be made powerless, if there is to be a reworking of the global environment in all its aspects: political, financial, environmental, and social with an elimination of a militarized corporate world. It is the very fear of this group that the US$ will collapse and their power will be lost, as it must for the world to have a chance to recover from its inequities.
The American Trap: My Battle to Expose America’s Secret Economic War Against the Rest of the World – Book Review
By Jim Miles
The American Trap: My Battle to Expose America’s Secret Economic War Against the Rest of the World. Frédéric Pierucci (with Mathieu Aron). Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2020.
It becomes more clear with more and more readings that the “American trap” is the US dollar, and that for some it is no secret. Frédéric Pierucci’s well-written personal story tells how he became a pawn in the greater game of economic control of the world’s finances and the world’s politicians and corporations.
This story reminded me of John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman in that it is not an academic research paper nor a journalistic exposé, but the story of one person’s journey into the darker side of geopolitical manipulations.
Different Themes
The work exposes several main themes as it works through Pierlucci’s adventures, and like all geopolitical stories, all the factors are interrelated. The first theme is, as per the title, the economic war waged by the US against the rest of the world. It has become in my view the overarching component of US efforts to prevent the failure of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
If that happens – as China has expressed it is interested in doing and along with Russia having taken steps to avoid major repercussions – the US is powerless financially and only has its military left as a threat. The military is powerful, and extremely dangerous, existentially so, and its main purpose is not freedom nor democracy nor human rights but to protect the use of the US dollar as the global currency.
Combined with that theme, supporting and underlying it, are Pierucci’s accounts of the manipulations of the Department of Justice of the US using its self-created extraterritorial powers to force compliance to US demands (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 1977).
No surprise, this also includes the manipulations of foreign governments and corporations being forced to comply with the courts’ own manipulations and includes the assistance provided to domestic companies in order to control foreign enterprises. It shows clearly that corporation CEOs are only interested in the dollar value of the company to the extent they are willing to throw their own employees away in order to save their own skin from having to face a prison term in the U.S.
This leads to a smaller theme, that of the nature of the US For-profit private prison system. The conditions described by Pierucci are inhumanely terrible notwithstanding the argument that these are criminals and are receiving the results of their actions. The relationship between the threat of jail time, the threat of huge fines, the DOJ’s manipulations of the corporations and the prison system, all make for a system that is neither equitable nor just, nor capable of reforming any kind of criminal behavior.
Overviews in Hindsight
As the story draws to its finish – and arguably it will be a long time before it is truly finished – several powerful statements are made.
First the criminal justice system: “This ‘prison capitalism’, this race for profit at the expense of the most basic human rights, is degrading”. Another objective is to pressure inmates into plea bargains and thus “improving its already Stalinist statistics (98.5 percent success rate).”
In his own trial sentencing Pierucci, framed as the leader of a bribery operation, was lectured by the judge on corruption when his case involved the US’ corruption of Suharto’s Indonesia. “This judge fully embodies American hypocrisy in all its grandeur.”
Pierucci’s strongest statement arrives in the epilogue:
“This is a war that is more sophisticated than conventional warfare, more insidious than industrial war, a war that the public are unaware of , a war of the law….lawfare…which consists of using the legal system (the law) against an enemy, or an adversary designated as such, in order to delegitimize such an adversary, causing it maximum damage and forcing it to comply using coercion.”
He then reaches the crux of the issue: “By virtue of the power of their dollar (used for worldwide trade) and their technology [and be assured that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, CIA, FBI are all part of that technology, the Cloud Act, 2018]…are they really the only ones in position to enact extraterrestrial laws and, above all, enforce them.”
Finally, “the Washington administration always serves the interests of a plutocracy who own its industrial, financial and more recently technological giants…And…is the first country to conclude phony deals in many countries under its area of influence…the brutality of American unilateralism and imperialism is staring us in the face.”
Endnotes
Frédéric Pierucci is not innocent as he did work for a corporation using bribery and kickbacks in order to gain an advantage over other companies and win contracts in foreign lands. He was involved indirectly with events between France’s Alstom and the Indonesian government; he became the fall guy for events between Alstom and GE’s takeover bid of the company.
The American Trap is honestly written and exposes much of what is not seen in the world of geopolitics. It adds support to the idea that the US’ greatest power is not its military, but its control of the global financial system. As it threatens Russia and China with sanctions and expulsion from the financial system – SWIFT in particular – it would seem it is threatening its own sagging hegemony for global financial transactions. Outside SWIFT, there are many countries dealing more and more with alternate systems of payment and transfers.
The clear idea from all the above is that it is the power of the US dollar supported by extraterritorial laws (stemming from its belief in its own infallibility) that control the world. The military is mostly an adjunct to that.
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