Actually Colonel Wilkerson misses a very important point. Vietnam caused a whole generation of what would have become policy experts to opt out of government service. This left too high a proportion of careerists and yes-men. To me that was the most revealing of the disclosures in the Wikileaks material: With very rare exceptions a bunch of second-raters telling the head office what they believe it wants to hear.
Ironically, because of the Service Academies and the War Colleges the military officer class, of which Col. Wilkerson is a member, received a very good education, and also have to be guys who get shot in these wars. They have a much more realistic appraisal of cost-benefit.
At this point we might actually do better with a military government than with the present corrupt oligarchy.

the men of character opted out.

wilkerson feels owned.

I know I am late to the party, but this was a great interview. Really we'll explained by both Paul and Larry.

Obama might be prudent but what about the forces on the ground the operation gladio people the academi people the right sector people who have been deputized as military. All under the guidance of NATO "communications" support. These people are so inept they couldn't even wipe the UN symbol off the helicopter they used to attack civilian self defence forces in the east. And if their were Russian operatives there those choppers would have been blown out of the air.

The fact that we are supporting Fascist forces in Kiev 70 years after the defeat of Hitler indicates to me that Western capitalism is in serious crisis and that is above all what makes this world go around.

It is obviously time for a post capitalist world. After all we had post Marxism didn't we?

This is a very important conversation that all citizens should be participating in at full throttle. We have let the decision making powers of our government be taken over by those of super wealth, and the fact that they have done this behind closed doors, in secret, makes it all the worse to contemplate. Count up all of the bad things that are happening in our world, all at the same time, and you will see the effects of these oligarch's on everything this country was created for. They are doing us in, Khrushchev said he would bury us, and the nation flipped out about it, so why don't we get upset about our own oligarchs working so hard to bury us themselves? Quit listening to the major news outlets, and start paying attention to what the Real News produces if you want to find out what is really happening in our world..

u got a more cutesy wootsey icon?

Thank you.

may i recommend a green dot?

im guessin 50% sarcasm : )

Thanks and on to the next part.

In contrast to the US president, who is a puppet only to sign what his masters demand, Putin is more powerful. He is more in control than most of the western leaders, who are more or less 'lobbyists'.
Since Putin took power in Russia, the nation became healthier. I'm not refusing that there are no oligarchs, but they are under Putins administration. Of course he is not a sacred leader but he is A LEADER, the head of the state. Whereas Obama or Merkel...are only puppets. See what is going on regarding surveillance or TTP. Everyone who dares to talk to Snowdon is declared as a criminal, WTF! Nobody should be worried about free trade although they make deals in secrecy, WTF!

one dollar one vote

A clue to the answer:

The U.S. Empire does not exist so that I can buy cheaper haberdashery. It exists for two reasons: corporations want wealth; politicians want power. Benefits to U.S. consumers of haberdashery? They could not care less!

Questions never asked by progressives and anti-imperialists, like me:

Today, I shopped for haberdashery, sox and boxer-briefs. The sox were made in El Salvador; the briefs in Honduras. Both countries are under the hegemony of the U.S. Both countries' peoples have suffered and are suffering under military oligarchies supported and protected from indigenous independence movements by the U.S.

The twelve pairs of cotton sox and eight boxer-briefs cost me $60.00 plus tax at a well known department store chain. It was the third store in the mall I shopped. The first two had higher prices.

If El Salvador and Honduras had democratic governments, independent of the U.S. Empire, they might have union workers, higher standards of living, and export their manufactured haberdashery at much higher prices, or U.S. workers might have jobs again in the textile industry and the haberdashery would cost me equally higher prices.

Question: Would I save more on not having to support with my taxes our huge military establishment and the foreign military aid that goes to El Salvador and Honduras than I save now on the lower prices from the slave-labor in those two countries? Generalize the question! Do I do shop better by paying taxes to support history's most expensive military establishment, intellligence and security services than by having a military downsized to the real threats to the U.S. (diminished by the reduction in our own state terrorism)?

Leaving out all considerations of humanity and rule of law (domestic and international), when it comes to my wallet which is the better buy empire or the golden rule? If the golden rule is more expensive, are American willing to pay more for their haberdashery, for example?

let's hope those cheaper briefs don't pinch. : )

usa......I sure am. But I'm not really a consumer as such. I buy what I need, and not what I want that is going to show up at a garage sale the next year for at most 1/3 of what I paid for it. Talk about throwing out the profits! I also shop and have for a couple of decades now at high quality second hand shops. I like buying what other individuals picked out and liked rather than some 'buyer' on Madison Avenue. I also like seeing how it has held shape and washed up. I have 2nd hand sweaters and skirts and blouses that are of classic design that I have had for almost 20 years! I have a 2nd hand London Fog trench coat I've had for almost 30 years and in perfect shape.
I buy 2nd hand furniture and refinish. The quality is so MUCH better in craft and materials. I buy 2nd or 3rd hand cars (Japanese). I've not paid over $3500 for a car since 1982. My last car was a 5 year old Nissan Altima and I drove her for 13 years. I do not buy from dealers but from individuals who put a car they want to sell in their yard. I have never never broken down on the road on short or long trips. I thank from the deepest part of my heart those people who bought brand new good items and to be politically correct replaced them soon. The snobby insecure wasting consumer is good to me.
I've been to a Mall 3 times in my 75 years. Hate them. I shop for gifts or pieces of art/craft from local small shoppes that sell homegrown 'artisan' talent. And I always shop hometown --never national stores or restaurants. I buy 2nd hand P/Cs where the former owner just had to have the latest!
USAans are pretty dumb about 'Waste Not; Want Not economics.

Well, Smarty, you can do that with cars, but I doubt you would buy someone's still good, but used haberdashery, even if it were made in Japan!

usa....no it would have to be Italy, Spain, or France, or a real tested and tried U.S. company --haberdashery is associated with men's wear of which I do not buy or wear. My excellent London Fog was made in Spain. I've never gotten a rash.

My boys don't play in someone else's court; no matter Italy, Spain, France or even, the U.S.A.

usa.......well to each their own I guess.....as a listed tennis player in my area I know cheap courts, and what you paid indicates cheap court, and cheap courts are lousy on good balls. Scuffy, you know ---wear out faster.

juda, you wrote, "... and cheap courts are lousy on good balls." You may more easily judge the quality of a tennis court than one can judge the quality of what is in a plastic package. In the latter case, all one has to go by are what has been purchased from the store before and what is stated on the package. In the present case, those factors were more influential for me than the price. I notice, too, that in the case of cars, you do not judge by price. You buy used Japanese cars on the cheap based on past experience with their quality and reliability. I use the same criteria for my boys' haberdashery.

thank you for this. he talks well above my pay-grade, and yet seems to come to similar conclusions. we need MORE interviews with knowledgeable citizens like this to shed light on what's going on inside the locked watchcase of gov't. plus, any person who can drop terms like "ignominious" without batting an eyelash is someone you need to pay attention to.

WILKERSON: I think it's probably less fundamental and less precise, and therefore less in the interest, often, of the United States than you might think or that the American people might think. Because of what you've just suggested, that there are many poles in American foreign-policy, from the Congress to even the Supreme Court, to the White House, to the State Department, the Foreign Service, and so forth, it's a very complex mix, and it's rarely ever articulated in a way or manifests itself in a way that good leadership can control it, handle it, and manage it toward a real strategic objective.

Many, many of the members of these "poles" of power that Wilkerson mentions, all are members of the various quasi-secret groups who meet annually to flesh out overall policies and strategies to preserve and advance the agendas of the now publically acknowledged Oligarchs. Groups like the Bilderbergs and the Trilats, which are very real. Many people roll their eyes at the mention of them, but remember, people like John Perkins et al have actually worked for these people. Holy Sklar edited an excellent book about the Trilateral Commission. We've got stop ignoring the presence of these Oligarchs and demand to know who-what-where-why of their existence and what impacts their decisions make on our lives and futures. Know your enemy, is the first order of battle. Don't let MSM brow beaters like Rachel Maddow or Bill O'Reilly scold us away from being "Truther" about what is happening in the world.

wilkerson still smells like one of them.

Maybe we see this all too tightly. We talk of oligarchy and elite, and others hear Bilderberg, "trilateralists", "the globalists", or financial parasitic class, or simply old style: bourgeoisie. But it's a lot more "fuzzy" than any of that. Fullblad mentioned that article about the 147 LLC's (edit: actually it's TNC's, transnational corporations) that are at the core of the world's economy, which all have members sitting on each other's boards. So let's call them by this vague term which is still the best characterization: the ruling class.

The study about the 147 TNC's is btw available in a version of the manuscript to be found on arxiv.org (free download):

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/a...

Of course, this study does not directly claim that everything is a big conspiracy, a consciously organized network, it merely makes a quantitative classification of the nodes of a huge network of business connections in which then these 147 (or in some other diagram just a cabal of 18 banks) come out first with maximal network centrality, forming the most strongly connected component of a much larger network of transnational corporations. All this still can not prove the "Bilderberg globalist cabal" or something like it. It wouldn't work anyways, there would be too many people to be kept in line. Payment and reward and not complete reliance on secrecy is much more efficient for power to work, especially if the public can be convinced that they themselves elected and choose to support the "meritocracy". The network of mutual partial ownership is only one aspect of the whole story of course, it can be investigated by computational methods because it is already quantitative from the beginning and can make use of very general graph theory methods, in which a graph is just nodes connected by edges representing relations. Using different types of relations you get a different network, but the totality of all these mappings does tell something about reality.
Also, the center of the actual network of power is not uniform, and it's not free of plenty of conflicts, and the occasional palace revolution, but it is very closed and closely nit, especially when looking from the perspective of the normal mortal (which is the only perspective that I can have anyways). The whole thing is of course a lot more complex: Besides and coupled with these merely economical and financial networks of relationships, there are all these social connections and networks around special organizations and think-tanks from which politicians are sometimes drawn and to which they sometimes retire. Other than that, the relations of the ruling class with the academics and the middle and upper management is probably more like this: money and opportunities trickling down to those who can suck up the most. There is no need for brainwashing on that level.

It could not escape my attention that this study is not only not buried at all, but very much discussed among the "uppity", and all their magazines, like The Economist, and there has been for several years a real boom about making such network studies. Besides this study there are many other quantitative attempts to map the "network of power" on various related aspects, for example the networks of the Davos participants, or many other large maps: market networks, capital flow, consumer preferences, or dynamics of networks, e.g., how memes and advertisements are spread, how fast an idea can be spread, how a technology can replace another, or how a diseases spreads, or how cyber attacks can be tracked and stopped, and lots of research is done how to use all the metadata to track "terrorists", (meaning tracking all to find a reason for tracking all: the occasional successfully found terrorist is then turned into celebrity ). There is now an entire cotton industry of "predictive" power.
The elite is interested in all this to find out how to defend and strengthen their positions, to expand and strengthen their networks by scientific methods, but I guess also to a large part to just have a new outlet to marvel about themselves and see their supreme power presented in many nice diagrams all over the internet. Yet, they also may want to assess how much they have to worry about the dissatisfaction of the rest of society which increasingly recognizes them as a parasitic class.
Connected with the enormous concentration of wealth is the continuing inflation of financial derivative speculation, which is taking on almost cosmic proportions, having reached a monetary "value" of up to 1.5 quadrillion dollars (1,500 trillions) of mainly over-the-counter traded derivatives with unknown and unreported terms. This is lot of dark money, though just numbers in spreadsheets and trading computers, its nominal "value" is more than 100 times the entire global gross domestic product. And just like with dark matter in cosmology, no one really knows how big that dark money pool really is and what is in it.
This may even scare many in the financial aristocracy. They aren't really all that sure that they can control the oscillations and chaotic volatility that they themselves introduce by massive speculation in derivatives and hedges, which are claimed to be done for stabilization but also to profiteer from that instability (just wondering, which one is more fun for them? must be like dynamite fishing).

The economist Joseph Stiglitz has been warning about this from a theoretical perspective, for example as one of the authors of a paper about "Complex Derivatives":

http://www0.gsb.columbia.ed...

The paper argues that it follows from relatively general theories of complex networks that - contrary to the often heard mantra "diversify, diversify!" - the creation of more and more complex derivatives, which introduce ever more connections in the network - most of which can't even be traced because of secrecy, that all this must lead at some point to a major instability of the entire global network. (They cite the "May–Wigner theorem", in case you're interested in the math:)

http://fokon.hu/mat/mat_fil...

Works like the above mentioned corporate power network study seem to be increasingly popular among many academics, foremost in economics, management, social sciences, even anthropology (maybe that's why there are so many anthropologists?) If you look at a bunch of the abstracts, motivations and intended purposes for studies, it seems to be driven by ideas that sound really positive on first sight, e.g., trying to explain and quantify growing inequality by using concrete data, or explaining how a school system could try to reduce race and class segregation - for instance, by investigating friendship networks among children. Obviously, it's hard to imagine someone being able to publish something that declares in the introduction that the intention is to increase race segregation, but the large majority of the involved academics probably really have the best intentions. On the other hand, in some areas it looks directly through the fabric what the real purpose of many of such studies are: There is work sponsored by DARPA to investigate the theory and practice of "terrorist networks", others receive a lot of money from private enterprises to make market predictions using graph theory and complex network methods, or from Wall Street to figure out how to predict the next moves in their investment tactics. As always it's all there, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Still, we should find out more about this same stuff, namely the quantitative assessments of networks of power and their dynamics, and try to understand it, because it describes aspects of reality. Obviously with opposite intentions of those of the elite, which needs this kind of method to maintain their hold on power. Basically, we should learn about networks to better expose them and, quite frankly, to chase them apart if necessary.

I certainly don't know enough about all this, and this is also very speculative. But I can imagine that if we had all the data about mutual interests and financial connections, and a database about all the professional links of the "great men and women in power", and in addition perhaps much of the metadata - which the NSA certainly has but we don't - about all relevant communication links between them - It should be possible to draw a much clearer (even interactive) picture of the structures of power, and it would be quite useful for the public.

- so why don't we just write a grant application to DARPA to get this done? ... Fat chance, just kidding.

alexander smacked that gordian knot.

we the people have to re-value and re-direct the digital money supply.

press the pulsating green button

Reiner, Fullblad, thanks for an insight!

These are great problems for further research!

All needed is to delete the Privately owned World bank,then create a Bank that only serves as a creation
for Money and that belongs to NOBODY..Oligarchs are serving only their own interest but are really only
foot soldiers for those idiotic creatures who have the desire rule the World.
They do not understand that humans are less than Fleas crawling on the back of Planet Earth.
Of course that is not acceptable to someone that is ruled by the Ego and who believes in a God and the the idea that the Group of Monkeys that he is part of is the Superior to the rest of the Monkeys of the World...How Stupid and sad...

usa.....what is needed is We the People as one to produce democracy from hometown to Washington. For 300 years we thought this meant to vote people into the Republic and our wishes would be granted. How has that worked out? And unfortunately there are those within We the People who think gettin' out the guns and havin' a revolution --is the only way. It will sink us. We need, in every community on the planet, to organize and systemize a foundation for democracy where every citizen plays a part. Unfortunately, so far, we have proven to be too stupid or too lazy to do so. Until we can recognize ourselves as part of the problem --the problem won't get solved.

So; why is Obama's State Department deciding who gets to be in charge in Ukraine? Obama will go as far as he can and he did. He looks like a fool. Greed and lust for war rules the State Department.

usa......I really think it is not fair to blame President Obama for everything that has gone crooked since the beginning of the Roman Empire. Our awareness is not because any of this is new --but because of the internet and flow of information and the Freedom of Information Act and Whistleblowers and the writings and documentaries of historians and quality journalists. We are really catching up on a millennia of global corruption by those we elect and pay. Humanity has been Ponzied. As long as there are people naïve enough to blame one President or one administration --the Ponzi won't stop, and civilization will continue to de-evolve.

That there have always been tyrants and villains ought not lessen our condemnation of the one we have now. That Barack Obama is a villain as destructive to millions of human beings in other countries and ours, comparable to any in history is not arguable. He deserves the sharpest condemnation and the most severe punishment that can be meted out to any criminal, whether a political leader or a common murderer.

usa......You are bordering silly, at the least.

People in our country, not to mention others, are already dying from severe weather conditions like none experienced in the recorded past of the US. As human caused, global warming continues, Obama fiddles as did Nero watching Rome burn. Our President's political cowardice adds each day to the tragedy that lies ahead for our younger generation, which will have to deal with and suffer from AGW. A great part of what is to come could have been averted had Obama used his mandate in early 2009 rather than having wasted it. This applies not only to foreign policy, as Wilkerson asserted, but to every other problem we face as a country. In 2008, before the election, Ralph Nader said that Obama lacks "political fortitude". We see now how true that is, but there is more lacking: the will to do good, "at the least."

usa....In the 60s is when the masses were first informed of Climate change and it's being contributed to greatly by man's activities, --by the Flower Children and their Professors. We were warned about overpopulation, fossil fuels and chemicals, enormous decimation of cultures and environments by the multinationals, corruption within the IMF and Federal Reserve, the concentration of wealth by a few, covert activities of the CIA in other countries, and coming wars due to the changes in the climate and lack of water and agricultural abilities. The Hippies continued to bring the news forward with their Professors. They were informing and protesting all over America and the so called free world. They got demonized, by the neocons and ultra right, as tree huggers, druggies, and anti-American for their anti-war activities. Many went to jail and to Canada, some got killed. Professors were sent to the back of the room and college education began its' downslide to the point it is today of kids running wild away from home. All of this beginning before Obama was born and you are going to state to me HE has done nothing?????
The Colorado Independent reported that The Koch Brothers were in Town. It reported that one remarked they had invested 100 Million dollars to have Obama defeated in 2012 because of his environmental policies, and claiming they considered this defeat of Obama as 'The War of Wars'. Think about this. Really think. 100Million dollars to defeat the President of the United States because of his environmental policies. And this isn't counting the other neocon Ultra right money. I think Adelson was 97 Million. Well they won didn't they with their money and vulgar and obscene slander and infiltrating the Tea Party and the Congress is now theirs.
If you didn't pick up from Wilkerson the powers behind the President running the show, you need a hearing aide. This has been going on in the world since the beginning of the Roman Empire and it isn't going to stop, and is at Critical Mass, until We the People stop blaming individual leaders and their administrations and begin to take serious ethical and moral responsibility as to our 'fortitude' in developing a moral and ethical Democracy --beginning right in our own communities. To use TheRealNews as a platform to blat and bluster and accuse without recognizing ourselves as part of the problem pretty much means the problem can't be solved. We've had the information for 54 years and 10 presidents who did NOTHING and stayed alive ---and you want to lay it all on one President? You are being silly.

You go back to the start of the Roman Empire, which is a point when the Roman Senate gave up its powers to the victorious general who had crossed the Rubicon and conquered Rome. Hardly a time of democracy! Let's go even further back to the time when Pericles persuaded the "demos" that Athens should build walls to the Piraeus and view the Spartans who had saved them at Marathon and Thermopylae as their enemy. My point is that democracies (Athens), even oligarchies (republican Rome), depend on leaders to direct them. Obama is surely not a leader of the measure of Caesar or Pericles, but the pipsqueak's character is not just marked by his lack of "political fortitude", crippling him as a leader, but by his malevolence. No one who lies as he has done since he was a U.S. senator can care about the consequences of his actions. No one who has smashed the Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd amendment!) as he has can care about the people of the U.S. Imagine a President who would assume the power to execute citizens as did Henry II, before the Magna Carta, a democrat! A President who would give torturers immunity from prosecution! A President who would buy, unconditionally, at face value, the worthless assets of fraudulent banks with our (taxpayers') money! A President who would prosecute a small, NYC bank in Chinatown that lost no money, while allowing JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, Wells Fargo banks and executives to go free! Oh, I am so silly to be so hard on the poor man, am I not!

usa......You just don't get it. Ya gotta have a fight instead of discourse. You live in the past and not seeing that the democracies fell and so did the oligarchies. Why? Lack of leadership from the elected/appointed Leaders? No, because of the We The People --who did not accept their personal and collective responsibility in leadership. "Let George do it and if it doesn't work, blame it on George".
Let's stop this silliness of responsibility dumping.

"Ya gotta" recognize that "We The People" are mostly busy earning a living and have not be taught participatory democracy in school - surprise, surprise! Therefore, they need leaders with courage and integrity. After years of such leadership and good schooling, they will be better able to meet their responsibilities to govern themselves. You expect too much from ordinary people who have been badly educated as citizens. That expectation is just "silly"!

usa.......You are short on imagination for problem solving and your memory is not serving you well. The people who developed our so called democracy mostly had little education. If you want to justify the failure of democracy fine. But stop blaming it on the moon.

I think you are short on the history of our country. The people who prompted the revolution, wrote the Constitution, and became the early presidents, cabinet secretaries, and members of congress were wealthy real estate developers, plantation owners and northern merchants and bankers, They were people with the best educations of that day. Thus our country continued with few democratic interruptions. Our "democracy" never failed. It never got started. For a person so mindless of the past, you are very intolerant of informed opinion, I regret to note. I shall try to make this my last word in reply to you, unless you again write what is false.

usa....I had to remind myself of how this 'argument' began and what was the original topic. The original topic: Who Makes Foreign Policy. People expressed views. Then we came to you calling me a 'smarty' with your crude remarks about your skivvies. I played.
Then you attack, with unproven factual slander, the President of the United States as if He were the cause of all the U.S. and Global problems. I counter argue with stating the problems with the world and U.S. come millennia before President Obama and I use the Roman Empire as a beginning point. I don't discuss the Roman Empire.
And boy you jump right to sophism in history of the ancient world and comparing the President to such leadership that existed in ancient times, dismissing any of my argument that the problems we have existed long before President Obama.
I counterpoint with the democracies/oligarchies of ancient times falling because of the We The People did not take personal/collective responsibility for their governance.
You justify the lack of responsibility of We The People on having jobs and not being 'taught' participatory democracy in school. And you tell me I expect too much from the We The People (the ordinary) who have been badly educated.
I counter with those who mostly 'developed' this country had little education. I should have stated formal education which in today's language means University degree. I stand by this statement suggesting that more than 1/2 of the signers of the Constitution had less than a college degree. And several had no education beyond primary school. Including our first President. Many were apprenticed to Fathers, Uncles, Friends in a specific trade. Even Law and Medicine was often apprenticed. I will add that most of the 'citizens' of little formal education and no education did quite well as a collective citizenry. Most were self learned in a trade as well as in citizentry.
Whatever, I stand my ground as to the original point of argument --that it is silly to blame the president or any one president of the United States with all the ills we suffer. And I maintain the citizenry is educated enough and have enough time collectively to build a decent democracy instead of blaming the fall of the democracy on the Republic! Where there is the Will there will be a Way.
I usually agree with your post opinions. On this one I find your point is more ingrained in a personal psychological agenda that really has nothing to do with the President present or past, nor with reality. Or with me for that matter. And if you want to pick up your bag of marbles and run home.....be my guest.

To avoid both running home with my fully won bag of marbles and wasting more of my time, I shall answer only one of your "silly" statements:

"Then you attack, with unproven factual slander, the President of the
United States as if He were the cause of all the U.S. and Global
problems."

If I have slandered your apotheosized president, "He" (sic), as you accuse, you have failed to refute my supposed slander. Obama I have never claimed to be the "cause of all the U.S. and Global problems" but he has certainly made them worse in ways I described, partially, in this exchange.

I am now moving on to more important matters.

usa.......Good, and heyyy? Don't drop that 'won' bag of marbles. Won? That's what this is all about? No longer silly. Just pathetic.

Excellent interview. Lots of great insights.

There are times when I find Wilkerson quite endearing, and this is one. He brings out the best on Paul. but they are both missing something, which I propose that there is no grand scheme, and there never has been a grand scheme, except in people's imagination who specialize in foreign affairs.

Countries are not really entries, that are abstract intellectual concepts. And when their leaders operate with integrity, they provide a nice environment in which to live, And when they operate without integrity, they offer an environment in which to live.

Not being entities, it is not possible to have an authentic foreign policy. But that doesn't stop government officials to act as if there is one, and to do what they can to implement their views. But over and over again it turns to naught, causes a lot of chaos, destruction and suffering. So I look forward to the day that Wilkerson will admit the whole thing has always been a game. Which, to me, is why rich folks can have such an impact: the politicians, living in delusion, are incapable of recognizing that government should never be involved in trying to have an American company have an unfair advantage in another country.

Ah well, history clearly reveals that most humans always operate in very counterproductive ways. Guess I'll have to grin an bear it.

incorrect papasan,

the thing is called the great game, and govt honchos keep us misdirected.

Wow, I agree with 90% of what you have written. While I find some serious flaws in libertarianism some of the ideas therein have some merit.