The eight elements of how oligarchs seize power, as outlined by Arthur Geoffrey Woodhead in his book "Thucydides on the Nature of Power."

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In October 2008, there was the infamous Big Bang bailout of Wall St. that created a new and fragile global economic universe, in which the pull of some gassed-up shooting stars on Wall St. and elsewhere, such as Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, can now bring down entire economic planets, from bodies like the United States government, to the EU. At the time, journalist Christopher Hitchens criticized the bailout package as socialism for the rich, as did others, and appropriately called the United States of America a banana republic in a column for Vanity Fair. Hitchens wrote:

What are the main principles of a banana republic? A very salient one might be that it has a paper currency which is an international laughingstock: a definition that would immediately qualify today's United States of America. We may snicker at the thriller from Wasilla, who got her first passport only last year, yet millions of once well-traveled Americans are now forced to ask if they can afford even the simplest overseas trip when their folding money is apparently issued by the Boardwalk press of Atlantic City. But still, the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it. At all costs, therefore, the one principle that must not operate is the principle of accountability.

The absence of the rule of law is the most concerning aspect because in a such a state of affairs the potential for civil disorder is not a possibility but an inevitable byproduct. Some concerned citizens may come to the conclusion in the near future, after a considerate amount of time and a deep reflection upon the facts of the national situation, that they must step outside of the boundaries of legal proceedings and change the government through whatever means available to them. And then all hell will break loose, giving the corrupt occupiers of the government the justification for strict repression of the public's liberties in the name of security and order, which has already been mildly done through laws like The Patriot Act. In such a restless situation, the arguments of cooler heads are unlikely to prevail, and converting the group of fed-up citizens to the peaceful ways of Gandhi, as well convincing the group of oligarchical occupiers to implement drastic system-wide reform, will make reorganizing a financial system seem like a cakewalk in the park.

Unless the dominant financial parasites in Wall St., who have inserted themselves into the body politic as a disease and yet declare themselves to be the host, are not curtailed soon and taken to task for their documented trespassing of the law, then the course of events described above is not too far off. Indeed, every day political disorder and civic tension looks like America's immediate fate.

The British-American economist Simon Johnson, who was the Chief economist in the IMF from March 2007 until August 2008, just a month before the crash, arrived at the same conclusion as Hitchens. In his article "The Quiet Coup," which appeared in The Atlantic in May of 2009, Johnson said:

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn't be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn't roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests--financiers, in the case of the U.S.--played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

The supremacy of predatory finance in Washington D.C., and in every major capital in Europe, is no longer a silent conspiracy. The international banksters who have taken the global economy hostage are no longer shy about their undeniable power. In fact, they feel entitled to every penny coming their way. And the Obama administration, far from looking the other way, is helping to carry the bags. A blogger at Fire Dog Lake named "fflambeau" wrote a popular post a short while ago that listed the number of Goldman Sachs employees, and alumni who make up Obama's government appointees, or are in some way connected to the administration. The list is deeper than the upcoming NBA free agency class. To say Barrack Obama has a conflict of interest slightly misses the target, his presidency is entirely a Madison Ave-Wall St. joint operation. Nobody has benefited more from the Obama presidency than Goldman Sachs.

So it is not surprising that a year and a half after the crash that occurred in September of 2008, the Obama administration has not followed the required steps to return America's economy to a saner position, wherein a healthy equilibrium between the banks and the government can emerge, and lending to businesses and individuals can restart.

James K. Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, recently appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he told legislators that since fraud is at the center of the financial crisis, moving forward without first assigning blame to the perpetrators of the crisis would put America in grave political waters. Galbraith said:

Control frauds always fail in the end. But the failure of the firm does not mean the fraud fails: the perpetrators often walk away rich. At some point, this requires subverting, suborning or defeating the law. This is where crime and politics intersect. At its heart, therefore, the financial crisis was a breakdown in the rule of law in America.

One of the major reasons why the perception of fraud is not more widely held in the public is because key information about financial correspondences between institutions like AIG, The Federal Reserve, and Goldman Sachs, have not been made public. And what's still regarded as the "mainstream" media has not been on the case of Wall St. and Washington's shared shenanigans. Two months ago, veteran Wall St. regulators William K. Black and Eliot Spitzer wrote an op-ed called "Time for the Truth" in which they presented the argument that greater transparency is the bedrock of a new stable and safe economy. They said:

If we are to prevent another, potentially more devastating financial crisis, we must understand what happened and who knew what. Many SDIs are hiding debt and losses and presenting deceptive portraits of their soundness. We must stop the three card monte accounting practices that create the potential and reality of fundamental misrepresentation.

A.I.G.'s CEO, its board of directors, and the trustees that are supposed to represent the interests of the American people have failed to respond to our December letter calling on them to release to the public the A.I.G. documents that would be the treasure trove (along with other SDI documents) that would allow our nation to uncover and end the gamesmanship that caused this financial crisis and will bring us recurrent crises. We call on them to act.

The full-cost of non-action may not be realized until five, or maybe even ten years from now. According to Washington's Blog, the original TARP bailout merely scratches the surface of what is undoubtedly a culture of bailout galore. The secrecy of the Federal Reserve Bank has allowed the financial oligarchs to capitalize on the public's ignorance of the real depth of the crisis, and gave themselves billions and billions bonuses through a variety of hidden mechanisms available to the Federal Reserve and the Federal government. Washington's Blog:

But the TARP bailout is peanuts compared to the numerous other bailouts the government has given to the giant banks.

And I'm not referring to the $23 trillion in bailouts, loans, guarantees and other known shenanigans that the special inspector general for the TARP program mentions. I'm talking about more covert types of bailouts.

The whole process of bailing out predatory financial godzillas, and incurring public debts at the highest state level is described to taxpayers as a necessary evil, that it must be done to hold off a disastrous economic landing, but that metaphor does not apply, because the financial terrorists of Wall St., as financial analyst Max Keiser describes them, are not in control of a plane, but of a train, which means that there are no preferred runways, and that the illegal operators of the global economy are interested in only one destination: financial doom for all nations that they have held hostage. Halting the train, or adjusting the tracks in some way, are the two safe options that are left to the conscious citizens of the world.

Moreover, Ismael Hossein-zadeh, a Professor of economics at Drake University, has written in an article called "The Vicious Circle of Debt and Depression It Is a Class War" that there is a way out for the public from this forced partnership with the financial hostage takers, and all it comes down do is saying "NO" to odious debts. He writes:

Rectification of this unsavory situation poses stark alternatives: either the powerful financial interests, using the state power, succeed in collecting their debt claims by impoverishing the public; or the public will get tired of the vicious cycle of debt and depression, and will rise in protest--akin to the "IMF riots" in Argentina--to repudiate the largely fictitious and illegitimate debt. This is of course a class war. The real question is when the working people and other victims of the unjust debt burden will grasp the gravity of this challenge, and rise to the critical task of breaking free from the shackles of debt and depression.

I will be the first one to say that a man who does not pay his debt is not a man, but a thief, and he deserves the required punishment in the books. But debt imposed on the people in the middle of a crisis and for elitist interests is not a lawful debt, and should be discarded at the first opportunity. The demands of debt payments that was acquired by irresponsible scoundrels is only one side of this terrible coin, the other, an even more severe injustice, is the program of looting a people's retirement accounts and safety nets, which were put in place after hard won struggles, and sustained by public taxes. There is no other remedy to such injustices then a clear restoration of the government, and a reaffirmation of the rule of law for all men.

II. The Silent Surge of The Revolutionary Global Oligarchy

"And it is absurd to suppose that the state changes into oligarchy merely because the ruling class are lovers and makers of money, and not because the very rich think it unfair that the very poor should have an equal share in the government with themselves." - Aristotle, (Politics, Book V: CH.12)

That the elite want to rule is nothing new. In fact, if they were spiritually enhanced beings, I think the world would be better for it, but oligarchs are not the people's superiors, and they are never qualified to rule solely because they are in possession of disproportionate amounts of money.

The recurring response to the recent financial crisis by the global oligarchs and their front-men in politics and the media who attend meetings held by the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and other global organizations, is that the solution lies in a global central bank, along with a new world government that has the power to tax and punish. In January 2009 Sean Davidson wrote an article called 'Global central bank could prevent future crisis' and in it he suggested the following:

To avoid another crisis, we need an ability to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that could be achieved through some kind of global central bank, or through the creation of a global currency, or through global acceptance of a set of rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement mechanism.

An article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard called "The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency" was composed in a similar vein as the one by Davidson and appeared in The Telegraph in April 2009. Evans-Pritchard accurately describes such a move as a "revolution in the global financial order." He says:

A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqu???? issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.

"We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.

In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.

These articles that streamline the agenda of the global oligarchs through the media do not mention the fact that fraud and large-scale crime lie at the heart the financial crisis, instead, they repeat the narrative that what happened was "investment banks took excessive risks" and new global powers must be created to reign in their future activities. Such a clean sweep of recent history can only be understood intellectually if Orwell's lessons are applied wholesale. We live in a world which has been manufactured almost completely, without any regard for justice, truth, virtue, liberty, or any sort of common humanity.

But unlike before, bringing up the fact that institutions like the Federal Reserve Bank, World Bank, and Wall St. banks like Goldman Sachs engineered the same crisis that they are now pretending to fix doesn't make you look like a political heretic but an intelligent and informed person. To suggest such a thing a few years ago would put you in the same league as schizos. But due to the bravery and commitment of certain truth-tellers, and also because of new evidence, as well as a change in global circumstances, the origins of the global financial crisis and the political power of the global oligarchs is not so secret anymore.
The philosophy behind and the motives for global government sound noble and enlightening, but if the means don't match the end, then what guarantees are there that the global oligarch's ultimate plan for humanity will create a new age of prosperity and and advancement for the human species? Oligarchies can be just as inefficient and unjust as unrefined democracies. Also, in a global age the idea of an unaccountable and draconian world power ruling the heart of man, which rests in the public realm, is so grotesque, backward and depraved that every decent man and woman alive must peacefully counter its ascendancy. If their plan is not denounced as a tyranny, and resisted with full citizenry ardor, then the global oligarchs will most likely triumph over Man.

This battle between the global rule of international financiers and free people everywhere is a reality in our lifetime, as Lord Acton forewarned, and it is a battle that will be won through public knowledge of the facts and non-violent resistance. Journalist David DeGraw puts the battle into a historical perspective in his report called "The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy's Death Spiral From Greece to the United States." DeGraw writes:

The experiment known as democracy is devolving into fascism before our eyes; the " iron law of oligarchy" is once again asserting itself. From the Founding Fathers on, we have known that you cannot have a concentration of vast wealth and Democracy at the same time - and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the United States. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

The power struggle between democracy and the concentration of power represented within private banking interests has been a war raging throughout American history. Our Founders and early Presidents were very explicit in their opposition and our need to vigilantly guard against any private interests who sought control over our economy. In fact, our current crisis and power structure were summed up with stunning accuracy by the Founding Fathers themselves. What James Madison called, "the daring depravity of the times." As he described, "The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many."

Leave it to Madison, the Father of the Constitution, to give us one of the most prescient quotes on modern-day America you can find.

The power and reach of financiers is even greater than that of the monarchs of medieval times simply because they have the sole possession of credit. The ability to create credit and then lend to governments with usurious interests attached to the loan means in a Lord of the Rings context that the international financiers have acquired the one and all powerful ring. To make money out of thin air is to control the destinies of nations, kingdoms, and indeed, of the world. An oligarchy is bound to expand to cosmic proportions around such a powerful device.

Bruce Kapferer, a Professor of social anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, argues in a book he edited called "Oligarchs and Oligopolies: New Formations of Global Power" that the modern-state can not be conceived as the public defender, but as one of the chief organs that is used in the service of oligarchical corporations and oligarchs. In an essay which debuts the book called "Oligarchic Corporations and New State Formations" Kapferer writes:

"A major distinction of the past from the present is that corporations and trading oligarchies were largely based in the nation-state, empowered by it as they were ultimately regulated by it. Fundamentally, they were formations of the state or nation-state (the freebooting extension of the state that acted as if it was independent) that operated a state-like bureaucratic system, which continued through into post-colonial state orders. Apparently independent of the state, they were not bound by state legitimating moralities but were nevertheless under the cover of the state, acting in its interests.

In the current context, the situation is almost reversed. Nation-states are becoming the instrumentality of oligarchic empires and corporations. (The influence of News Corp and Fox is one example, but there are many others less publicly visible.) These, as I have said, are not only independent of states (are deterritorialized states) but have a state form all their own, managerial rather than bureaucratic, with a tension to person-centered autocracy stressing flexibility rather than rule-driven impersonality (Sennett 2000). Moreover, the modern state (the nation state) is transforming in the corporate direction rather than the other way around, as in the past.

Corporate forms and practices are being fused with state processes so that the state itself is taking a corporate shape, as well as a more overt oligarchic political form." (1)

In a fascist nation, the corporation's and the state's interests are one. The police and intelligence agencies of the American state such as Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, FEMA, and the NSA have been given the same mandate in this age of hyped terrorism, which is to protect the cob-web of interests that benefit the oligarchical corporations against the people. And over the last several years, state services have been outsourced to private security firms, the private surveillance industry, and other connected corporations. In a global fascist state the same trends will continue, and be completely cemented with worldwide forced implementation and regulations. Tom Burghardt writes frequently on this theme. In his article "Democracy Going Dark: The Electronic Police State" Burghardt remarks:

From warrantless wiretapping to the suppression of information under cover of state secrets, and from the waging of imperialist wars of conquest to torture, the militarist mind-set driving capitalist elites at warp speed towards an abyss of their own creation, are signs that new political provocations are being prepared by America's permanent "shadow government"--the military-intelligence-corporate apparatus.

Professor Kapferer also highlights this point about surveillance of the citizenry by the corporatist state in his essay mentioned above. He writes:

"Security and surveillance have become a major concern for the corporate state; in many ways, they are a means for protecting ruling interests against the public. If the nation-state frequently abused the rights of its citizens, this is now a strong potential of the corporate state, which both privatizes the means for violence and turns the greater violent power of economically dominant groups against the general citizenry. State violence takes a new oligarchic and corporate form. In guarding against the public, corporations project a vision of the mass that accords with the most abject view of the essential baseness of humankind (sometimes attributed to Hobbes but vital in the most dismal economist thinking)." (2)

The belief that the multitude deserve the pain and suffering that is felt in a totalitarian and closed society is probably one of the key motivations that drive the global oligarchs to install a global dictatorship. It is a primitive belief, and if people accept the global new-world dictatorship, either based on pure delusion or because they are of the same mindset, then they will invite suffering to themselves and their children.

III. How Revolutionary Oligarchs Seize Power

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - David Rockefeller, from his "Memoirs"

Revolutions reoccur throughout history. Sometimes they are just, sometimes not. In one era an enlightened political leadership lead it and once in power they proceed in the best interests of the people, while in another era a group of demagogues, or even worst, a ruthless tyrant, fill the vacuum left by a previous government. And there are many kinds of revolutions. The most well known kind is the popular uprising against an unpopular political system, which are represented in the events of 1789 in France, and 1917 in Russia, but revolutions can be achieved in other ways, in ways less public, and by characters who detest liberty.

Oligarchs prefer to go quietly into the good night of dictatorship, rather then make a big fuss about it. They conspire, connect, and finally convene when the pieces are set, and when the people's will is undermined. But if they have to, they could decide to sweep into power like a sudden storm, crushing protest, and making landfall at the same time. The problem of a complete oligarchical revolution is that like a storm, it doesn't last. After the carnage is done, and the waves recede to the shore, the people identify the perpetrators, get rid of them, and then seek to rebuild upon the devastation. It is a cycle that is repeated across time, and we are in the tail-end of another one at the beginning of this new millennium.

The coup by the oligarchy in Athens in 411 BC, at the time of the Peloponnesian War, and which consisted of 400 individuals, is the one that is most often cited. Arthur Geoffrey Woodhead, author of "Thucydides on the Nature of Power" describes in the chapter 'Power and the Elite' the eight elements or steps of how a group of oligarchs with revolution in mind can come to power, as featured in the work of the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides. I will try to explain to the best of my knowledge why Woodhead's list of eight principles is relevant to our understanding of how a group of revolutionary global oligarchs have attained power behind the scenes in our own era, and how they may achieve even greater power if we are not aware of their tactics, and vigilant enough to stop them in their tracks.

It's important to keep in mind that our global arena and its democratic cloak does not operate the same as the political system in Athens in 411 BC. For one, the global population and the army of bureaucrats in global institutions like the IMF, World Bank, EU, IMF, UN, are significantly larger than the population of Athens and its Assembly, not to mention that the present global situation in our day is also vastly different. Nevertheless, the ingredients for such a revolution, as Woodhead says, remain pretty much the same, and can be repeated in every era.

Before presenting the steps, Woodhead informs the reader that his recounting of Thucydides's findings are to increase knowledge about Greek history and particularly Thucydides's thought, and that he does not endorse a revolution of this kind. Although, he also says that it does have its virtues. He writes:

"What they proceeded to do provides a classic lesson in the art of seizing power--which, properly applied, is the art not of seizing it but of persuading those who have it to surrender it, for this is the surest way of acquiring it with a solid basis. This volume has no intention of appearing as a manual of revolution, nor is it part of the function of the Martin lecturer to offer advice on the best recipe for overthrowing a lawfully constituted government. But I think we may in this context properly investigate what are some of the essentials one must look to if one wishes to do that sort of thing. Thucydides, while not expounding them as such, allows them to appear clearly enough; they were, after all, inherent in the situation he was describing." (3)

So, how do oligarchs conspire to acquire power? "First," Woodhead says, "the occasion must be right." In order words, the perfect opportunity must come to pass, and if it is a crisis of the first order, then the moment must be seized at once, or better yet, surrendered. The best illustration in recent history of this principle in action is in September of 2008, when some members of Congress were misled and rushed into passing the TARP bailout bill on the delusion that if they did not pass the bill the economy would tank. Rep. Peter DeFazio even declared that all laws were waived upon the passing of the bill. There was even a threat that martial law would be enacted if Congress did not fulfill the wishes of Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson and Wall St. "There is no point," Woodhead says, "in raising revolutions that are doomed to failure from the start because the opposition is too strong." The moment to strike is when the people are the most misinformed, and under severe delusions.

"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an "extraterrestrial" invasion], whether real or *promulgated* [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."- Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

The second element is what Woodhead calls the "accession of popular sympathy." A revolution is more likely to succeed if the moderates in the conspiracy are on the side of the extreme revolutionaries, and if the people in general are ready for a dramatic change in governmental power. The popular mood must be in the advantage of the revolutionaries, or else bold moves may backfire, and the entire plan could be unwrapped rather quickly. In our era, popular sympathy for a world government will grow once people become so fearful and stressful about their future that they will accept strong leadership even if it means that they must give up their self-determination and self-rule. The selected politicians who are in the pockets of the global oligarchs are already using the hyped threats of terrorism, and climate change, and the reality of the global economic depression to take away the public's sacred liberties.

The next step is pure psychological deliciousness. If used to full effect, it would create mass confusion and general hostility among the ranks of an elected body, and the citizenry at large. I will quote Woodhead in full, even the section by Thucydides, because not a word is unimportant to leave out. Woodhead:

"The third important thing is to encourage nervousness among the opposition and, if possible, to make its members mistrust one another. By such means it is possible to make the conspiracy seem larger and more comprehensive and more terrible, and so plans can take shape with greater freedom of manoeuvre. Again, Thucydides explains it in the clearest terms. 'The people kept quiet, and were in such a state of terror that they thought themselves lucky to be unmolested even if they had said nothing at all. They imagined that the revolutionary party was bigger than it actually was, and they lost all confidence in themselves. It was impossible for anyone who felt himself ill-treated to complain of it to someone else. In so large a city he would either have to speak to someone he did not know or someone he could not rely on. Throughout the democratic party, people approached one another with suspicion, everyone thinking that the next man had something to do with what was going on."

There is a popular perception that the characters behind the New World Order, the catchphrase that defines the plans of the global revolutionary oligarchs, are larger than life, and that they are part of a Big Bad Conspiracy. But if we truly believe that, then what are our chances to reclaim liberty, truth, and justice? Zero. Is the conspiracy by the global elite to rule the world unstoppable? Absolutely not. The revolutionary global oligarchs make up a very, very small percentage of the world's population, and the people have no good reasons to be intimidated or afraid. As David DeGraw writes in "The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class" the global oligarchs represent only one percent of the global population, and perhaps even less, while the rest of humanity who desire equal opportunity, liberty, and new possibilities for prosperity, are 99% of the population. So there is no reason to be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. He may blow a house down, or even several on a block, but he can't blow down the entire global village without the villagers' compliance.

"The fourth ingredient," says Woodhead, "is to have good, innocent-looking 'front men' in whom the mass of people might have confidence but who can afterwards be discarded if necessary, or who may indeed have, unbeknown to their former associates, revolutionary convictions of a genuine kind." This is probably the most recognizable of all the principles. Politicians like Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, George Bush, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, Rham Emanuel, and others, fill the role of the "front men." They are the puppets who represents the interests of the global oligarchs, and who act out their designs. But they don't need to be politicians. Any spokesmen for the global oligarchs can fit into this mold. They are the sheepdogs in the fold, who chase the sheep into the desired position. They appeal to the emotions of the mass, and mislead them to their ruin. And their function, Woodhead informs us, is "to give the projected alteration in the balance of power a respectable appeal." But, Woodhead later writes, "in professing to serve the public interest they were bent on obtaining the prizes for themselves." And some of them are rewarded with plenty of dough, new status in the regime, or they may be thrown mercilessly to the wolves once they serve their purpose.

And now we come to the fifth element, one that people are well familiar with, which, Woodhead writes, is the "judicious use of terrorism - the elimination of a few obnoxious irreconcilables, now here, now there." The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the best modern example of this tactic, and it was used on the grandest of stages, to the grandest of figures, the President of the United States of America. The conspiracy of JFK's death is attributed to the machinations of Military Industrial Complex and the money powers-that-be in Washington D.C. and that explanation is much more plausible than a lone gunman story. There is a general aura around Kennedy's death because evidence of the murder was scattered, and a phony commission was set up to investigate his assassination on the premise that only Oswald could have done it. The other assassinations of RFK and MLK in that time period were done in the same fashion, and reveal the same dynamic power that operates behind the screens of American politics.

The murder of such public figures creates a big effect, it scares off any future reformers and potential resisters of the conspiracy. Any politician who gets too close to changing the system is immediately silenced, or, if he is too resourceful and persistent, he is killed. A politician man who is not moved by justice or love for liberty learns that he must play along to get along, and toe the party line. After such acts of terrorism, the conspirators gain a new foothold upon the throats of the people and the nation. Woodhead writes:

"The people still convened in the assembly; but they discussed nothing that was not approved by the conspirators; not only were the speakers from this party, but what was to be said had been previously considered by them. No one dared to speak in opposition to them, through fear and because it was evident that the conspiracy was widespread. If anyone did oppose, at once and in some convenient way he was a dead man. And no search was made for those who had eliminated him, nor any action taken against those who were suspected of the deed." (4)

The sixth condition is what I like to call the illusionary effect, and the way Woodhead explains it is thus: "the revolutionary programme," which can be any plan for domination by any set of oligarchs, "must not appear as such," and there must be "the need for capitalising on a trend for change which is independently apparent." This is probably the most important as it relates to the mass perception of the changing nature of their reality. In our era, the dawning of globalization is a fact of 21st century life, so to some a new global government is a given, and is not at all a bad thing. In these people's eyes, who are not part of the oligarchical conspiracy, a world state is a natural development in human affairs. What these people don't realize is that the plans for a world state have been manufactured to a great extent, and it will not be democratic. The writings of globalists and transnational organizations owned by the oligarchs have laid out their agenda for an undemocratic world state for a number of decades. They may not be complete masters behind the veil, but they come closer than any group of oligarchs in history have come before.

Another way this "illusionary effect" works is in the wake of a major crisis or catastrophe. The most recent example is the financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent manufactured developments. The economic depression has been made to appear as an independent process, and that the plans for a new world currency, and worldwide financial regulations, are wholesome and good. A large segment of the population is still unaware that the present economic crisis has been engineered by the manipulators of finance, largely housed in Goldman Sachs, Wall St., and the various private central banks of the world. Instead, a lot of people believe that the economic giants on Wall St. tripped over some bad debt due to risky mortgage loans and new financial gambling devices, which caused the whole economic system to get out of whack. But informed spectators of the crisis can see that it was approaching for a very long time, and the financial institutions in charge, as well as the rating agencies and regulators, let the crisis get out of hand by design, in order to consolidate power. And the talk of reform by the G20 and the leaders of the debt world serves only one function; to quiet the people into submission.

The seventh and eight elements, the final two, are the "plans and planners." It is the most obvious part of any large conspiracy. "You need to organise,"Woodhead says, "and in the background you must have good organisation men." In our day, such roles are filled by the characters who meet yearly at the Bilderberg Conference, the Trilateral Commission, and other organizations. The more visible characters meet at the G7, and G20, but they only carry out what has been worked out in the more hidden meetings. And the plan is to install a one world government that is controlled by ruling banking dynasties and global oligarchs. The installation of a one world government has been done cryptically for some time, but increasingly it is referred to out in the open, as a response to the various man-made crises and dubious threats such as global terrorism, global warming, and the global depression, all of which have been hyped or created for the sole purpose of making a world government sound attractive and necessary.

IV. Lessons From The Greeks

The actions of the revolutionary oligarchs in Athens in 411 BC provide a new lens to which to view the contemporary situation. It is important to understand the tactics they used to gain power, but we must also be mindful that there are limits to the analogy. The world is in new and uncharted territory. For the first time in history there is a conspiracy organized by global revolutionary oligarchs, and if they are ultimately successful, then the dream of liberty and justice for humanity will most likely not be realized in our lifetime. But the ancient oligarchs failed due to the vigilance and resilience of the Athenian people, and I believe that the current oligarchs will also fail, and once they do, they will be removed permanently from their posts as the occupiers of the banking system, the institutions of international finance, and global politics, and the people of each country will rule their own financial affairs.

An awakened humanity will shake off the grand conspirators and their anti-humanist designs in a flash, but it may take a while before the people of the world finally realize their gigantic power and the simple truth that they are all in it together. The global financial crisis has revealed that no nation is safe from the trappings of the gangsterism that defines the Western banking system. The political and economic independence of the United States of America cannot be achieved, if the independence of Canada and Mexico, of European nations, of African nations, and of nations in the Middle East, and Asia, are also not won.

The people of Latin America are ahead of the rest of the world in resisting the global oligarchical conspiracy, and they have a lot to teach us. And so do the ancient Greeks. The people of modern Greece, who are presently fighting against the takeover of the international banksters, will do themselves a great service if they opened the books of their ancient masters, and read them on the radio and television throughout the land, especially the speeches by Thucydides. They will find great similarity of the types of challenges that ancient democrats faced, and what they face now. And the same should be done by the people of America, Canada, and the rest of the world. This is a time for the mass of humanity to rediscover the Classical philosophers and statesmen, and read them the way people read their bibles. It is because of a lack of good education that the people in our modern Western society have sunk so low intellectually, and there is not a better time to reverse that trend than now.

In addition to education, I'm also a firm believer in non-violent civic resistance. The emergence of global boycotts of the debt-based money system, and of such tyrannical corporations as Monsanto is only a matter of time. And everybody in the world has a part to play in this great drama. But the greatest hope to defeat the global revolutionary oligarchs rests in the American people, because it is they who reside in the heart of the financial beast, and so, it is they who must end their power over humanity's destiny. And I believe they will be successful, because the sleeping giant, once fully awoken, will easily throw off the financial occupiers who are in possession of America, and set a new example for the world. I will do what I can to help them, and also take a stand in my own country. As Max Kesier said on the Alex Jones show on May 17, "the global insurrection against the banking occupation is on." Join it. And stay true to the non-violent principles of Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

Authors Bio:
Saman Mohammadi is a soldier of the infowar, and a full-time university student in Toronto, Canada. His blog is The Excavator - http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com.