Titanic Capitalists – Peter Phillips (DCC54)

50:43Now I want to get into something that you don’t get into in the book, but which I think you’re conversant in, so I think it’s important to bring up. You talk about these harmful economies that the Titans are engaged in, and they make money off gambling, liquor, private prisons. There’s one issue that I think is relevant to the way this oligarchy in the West has developed, especially in the 20th century and beyond, and that is the organized crime aspect—especially drugs. But the precursor to that is really prohibition and figures like Lansky and The Syndicate. They are intertwined with intelligence agencies. Lansky had connections to both the US and to Israel, and Lansky was one of the main figures facilitating and financing the original people who created the state of Israel.This drug economy is huge; it’s one of the top-traded, most lucrative international commodities. Peter Dale Scott writes in one of his books, which came out in the early 2000s, that the top three international traded commodities are oil, weapons, and illegal drugs. The illegal drugs seem to be more intertwined with intelligence agencies than anyone wants to admit. They get involved in affairs in the US—deep events. They’re involved in the JFK assassination, which has a big drug angle, with Jack Ruby being the most obvious example. Watergate—those burglars had all kinds of links to the drug traffic. Iran Contra had a big drug angle, which tied into Afghanistan’s drug angle with the Mujahideen. 9/11—many people seem to be connected to Western drug trafficking intelligence operations in different ways. This aspect of it is a secret weapon of these Titans, who control the underworld of organized crime and the intelligence agencies that can kill with impunity.Even though you don’t write about this in the book, I know you’re aware of it. How do you conceptualize this dark realm of organized crime and the relationship between organized crime and the national security state—a relationship through capital? Crime makes money, and that money goes somewhere. It’s put in banks, or it’s invested through these Titan companies.I would imagine a major share of the $50 trillion that they’re investing comes from illicit activities like the drug trade. That’s got to be a major portion of what they’re doing, and I’m sure they know it, right? It’s staggering, because you don’t just not know where $10 trillion came from out of your $50 trillion. Of course, it came from the drug trade, or from banks closely interconnected with allowing capital to be washed and reused.I heard Joe Rogan say this once. I don’t watch a ton of Joe Rogan, but sometimes people share clips. I don’t remember who the guest was, but it was years ago, and they were talking about the drug trade. He said, “Just stop and think about it, man.” I think maybe he was high, because he always smokes weed on the show, or maybe he wasn’t—but either way, it makes sense. He said, “Think about it. All that money in the drug trade, all those big organizations making it. Do you think these bankers are just going to let that money go? Like they’d say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want that money’? Of course, they’re involved.” It was funny because this stoner, mixed-martial-arts-fighting comedian was saying something important and true that you won’t really hear Western social scientists admit. It seems emblematic of the denial we have here.Right, I hear what you’re saying, and of course that money is there. We know the drug trade exists. What were Peter Dale’s numbers? Something like $500 billion?In American War Machine and Drugs, Oil, and War, he has different statistics. There’s also the fact that it was written in mainstream publications that one of the only sources of liquidity during the financial crisis, which kept it from being worse, was drug trafficking. Organized crime was still earning for the system. They were able to keep putting liquidity into the system because they have a steady source—the drugs they sell, often to non-wealthy people. This is done on a cash basis, so it doesn’t matter if the system is faltering—it’s a cash trade.It seems like that’s the most astounding part. And the fact that these same people would invest in private prisons, using drug profits, so they could put criminals in jail for drug trafficking—”criminals” in quotation marks. I have to think we’re at an inflection point where the regime in the West is so indefensible in how it operates that you cannot defend it unless you have enormous blind spots. Is the world waking up to this internationally? I think it is, and I think that’s their real weakness—more than what we can accomplish here. Internationally, this just doesn’t fly anymore.Do you think that’s the case, or do you think there’s optimism for what we can do?We can point this out and try to address the issues, and be as open about it as possible. But I worry that if we get too accurate, they may decide it’s time for us to be reversed in some fashion.You and me both.That thought occurs to me as well. Up to now, they haven’t really gone after academics, but another aspect is that fascist elements tend to emerge more when crises are acute. I think we’re getting to that point, which makes me hopeful but also worried. What makes me hopeful is what’s scaring very powerful people, because we’re looking at the same things.Writing a book like this, there’s always the thought that the people I’m writing about aren’t going to like it. I think they are in such powerful positions and have so much control over the world that something like this has very little impact on them. That’s a redeeming safety factor, from my perspective. But you have to do what you believe is the right thing to do—calling out the Titans and saying, “Stop this.” Having 20, 30, or 40 thousand people read the book and understand it is, to me, an important piece of trying to make some global change.I hope so.“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” Slot Gacor 4d They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World: Revisited