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Gangster Capitalism: The United States and the Globalization of Organized Crime
Everyone knows what organized crime is. Each year dozens of feature films, hundreds of books, and thousands of news stories explain to an eager public that organized crime is what gangsters do. Closely knit, ethnically distinct, and ruthlessly efficient, these mafias control the drugs trade, people trafficking and other serious crimes. If only states would take the threat seriously and recognize the global nature of modern organized crime, the FBI's success against the Italian mafia could be replicated throughout the world. The wicked trade in addictive drugs could be brought to a halt. The trouble is, as Woodiwiss demonstrates in shocking and surprising detail, what everyone knows about organized crime is pretty much completely wrong. In reality the most important figures in organized crime are employees of multinational companies, politicians and bureaucrats. Gangsters are certainly a problem, but much of their strength comes from attempts to prohibit the market for certain drugs. Even here they are minor players when compared with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that selectively enforce prohibition and profit from it. Woodiwiss shows how respectable businessmen and revered statesmen have seized these opportunities in an orgy of fraud and illegal violence
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2005
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June 17, 2013
'Gangster Capitalism'
by Michael Woodiwiss.
In all the reading I've done I never found anything as clearly written that explains the big picture so well. It's from 2005, so not out of date at all... well a little, considering the Crash of 2008 hadn't happened yet, but he covers it obliquely anyway by describing the inevitability of it... actually you could say the book's hypothesis was proven by events following from predictions one could have made reading it in 2005.
I've been wondering about what ties it all together... Crime, Business, Politics... and so I have been searching... and finding a little here and there. I began searching in earnest for academic sources that explore the relationship between the Right-Wing and Crime.
I hit my first pay-dirt a long time ago with two books I read called 'The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia' by Alfred McCoy... a real classic actually... and another called 'The Crimes of Patriots' by Jonathan Kwitny.
Then very recently I came across a paper called 'Organized Crime Groups, The State And Elites' by Alfried Schulte-Bockholt, B.A. Hons., M.A. where I found this quote from a Marxist sociologist:
I found that paper after I got pissed off reading all the time about how "Chavez' Venezuela is unable to control the flow of drugs and his military and security are involved with left-wing Colombian drug-smugglers..." etc. Fu**ing ridiculous.
The best you can do to make that boat float is point out that the FARC in Colombia charges a tax to the organizations that move cocaine out of the areas they control on the way to (vastly lucrative) markets in the North and that they protect the small farmers that make their (subsistance) living growing coca. Again, it is important see this in light of Woodiwiss' thesis and compare that with how RJ Reynolds & Phillip Morris have benefited and the wealth they have amassed for themselves and their growers in the U.S. Southeast over the last couple of centuries - and compare the number of fatalities attributed to the tobacco trade with the cocaine trade - there IS no comparison. But which group gets labeled as "gangsters" and "terrorists"?
I know from reading like this that Drug Rackets are ALWAYS associated with RIGHT-WING political actors, not Left-Wing. Jesus... it's OBVIOUS but you have to be able to name names and quote sources so these books are great because they describe in great detail the inter-relations between...
Politics: Right-wing politics as in Nixon, Reagan... actually Hitler if you want to get really at the facts considering the Bush family involvement with Nazis in the 30's. And of course, we know that right-wing politics really has f**k-all to do with that quaint notion of "the polis" ( from Greek: politikos, meaning "of, for, or relating to citizens") and is nothing more than the apparatus by which the not-so-hidden-hand of Money dominates the People which brings us to...
Business: As in Big Business as in how the British Empire made a large percentage of its profits in the 19th century in the Opium trade first destroying the local economy of India turning it into an opium plantation and then devastating China by turning millions of Chinese into dope addicts... those fortunes generated the the seed capital for the Bell Telephone Company among other things... look it up - and of course the fact that all the cash generated by the sales of all the contraband people, arms and dope all ends up being "washed" in "legitimate financial institutions" - remember BCCI? or more currently think HSBC, Citi, Western Union - and the armies of Politicians, Lawyers, Academics, Accountants and Professionals who facilitate all of this bollocks... basically all this "crime" not only doesn't conflict with "legitimate business", in fact they are inter-related so thoroughly that you can't tell where one starts and the other begins.
But the book by Woodiwiss really does the job. He doesn't stay stuck behind the facade erected by the architects of this Racket Planet to keep us all from seeing what is going on. He moves us beyond the charade of "criminals" and "good guys" and shows us the truth that He who controls how these things are defined in the public discourse attains the power to hide their own mega-criminality behind a wall of propaganda and brainwashing.
He describes this con-game simply showing how imagining the concept of "Crime" is first captured by those who control the Media, the "moral" institutions and the Economy and then redefined by getting people to support political agendas criminalizing certain behaviors like drug use or gambling - or simply migrating North from one's homeland to find work as neo-slaves to escape economic ruin in one's own country caused by these self-same Masters.
Moralists and Preachers, Media Mouthpieces, Hacks etc. churn out miles of Panic based on racism, lies and whatever to freak people out and bring them into a state where they agree that if it wasn't for "those bad people" "out there" (read: niggers, chinks, wops, cholos, kikes, micks, spicks, etc.) all us "good people" (read: wanna-be white Protestant/Catholic upper-class wanna-be's - of whatever skin complexion/racial persuasion) would be SAFE and we could "walk the streets at night" and our Daughters wouldn't get pregnant before Marriage and etc.
The Panic is hyped concurrent with vigorous efforts to destroy any political organization by citizens which challenges the powerful Business Owners in their exploitation of labor and the environment for their own private gain which in turn leads to social conditions in which many are motivated by opportunity to profit from participating in the illicit markets created by the criminalization mentioned above. Nice trick. Perpetual motion machine of vice, corruption and self-fulfilling profit-cy.
...and guess who rakes in the dough? It ain't the dope peddler on the corner, although for awhile he/she may get some bling out of the deal for sure... before they are sent up or shot down in the street... really, where does all that money go? Gambling, prostitution, human smuggling, dope... all of that generates huge amounts of cash that end up in the Man's pockets in the end.
Woodiwiss' genius is to explain the real beauty of this set up... the re-definition of Crime itself so that no one can even discuss the subject and talk about the monstrous crimes that go by the name of:
BUSINESS. Tainted food, toxic waste, carbon emissions, exploited labor, tax evasions, mass swindles and frauds (can you say "STOCK DERIVATIVES" or "MORTGAGE BUBBLE"?)... or how about "ENDLESS WAR"??
In all the reading I've done I never found anything as clearly written that explains the big picture so well. It's from 2005, so not out of date at all... well a little, considering the Crash of 2008 hadn't happened yet, but he covers it obliquely anyway by describing the inevitability of it... actually you could say the book's hypothesis was proven by events following from predictions one could have made reading it in 2005.
I've been wondering about what ties it all together... Crime, Business, Politics... and so I have been searching... and finding a little here and there. I began searching in earnest for academic sources that explore the relationship between the Right-Wing and Crime.
I hit my first pay-dirt a long time ago with two books I read called 'The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia' by Alfred McCoy... a real classic actually... and another called 'The Crimes of Patriots' by Jonathan Kwitny.
Then very recently I came across a paper called 'Organized Crime Groups, The State And Elites' by Alfried Schulte-Bockholt, B.A. Hons., M.A. where I found this quote from a Marxist sociologist:
"...a true sociology of the racket as the living factor of ruling classes in history could serve a political and scientific purpose. It could help to reveal the goal of political practice... [namely to work toward] a society without rackets."
- Horkheimer. "Zur Soziologie der Klassenverhaltnisse." 1O3
I found that paper after I got pissed off reading all the time about how "Chavez' Venezuela is unable to control the flow of drugs and his military and security are involved with left-wing Colombian drug-smugglers..." etc. Fu**ing ridiculous.
The best you can do to make that boat float is point out that the FARC in Colombia charges a tax to the organizations that move cocaine out of the areas they control on the way to (vastly lucrative) markets in the North and that they protect the small farmers that make their (subsistance) living growing coca. Again, it is important see this in light of Woodiwiss' thesis and compare that with how RJ Reynolds & Phillip Morris have benefited and the wealth they have amassed for themselves and their growers in the U.S. Southeast over the last couple of centuries - and compare the number of fatalities attributed to the tobacco trade with the cocaine trade - there IS no comparison. But which group gets labeled as "gangsters" and "terrorists"?
I know from reading like this that Drug Rackets are ALWAYS associated with RIGHT-WING political actors, not Left-Wing. Jesus... it's OBVIOUS but you have to be able to name names and quote sources so these books are great because they describe in great detail the inter-relations between...
Politics: Right-wing politics as in Nixon, Reagan... actually Hitler if you want to get really at the facts considering the Bush family involvement with Nazis in the 30's. And of course, we know that right-wing politics really has f**k-all to do with that quaint notion of "the polis" ( from Greek: politikos, meaning "of, for, or relating to citizens") and is nothing more than the apparatus by which the not-so-hidden-hand of Money dominates the People which brings us to...
Business: As in Big Business as in how the British Empire made a large percentage of its profits in the 19th century in the Opium trade first destroying the local economy of India turning it into an opium plantation and then devastating China by turning millions of Chinese into dope addicts... those fortunes generated the the seed capital for the Bell Telephone Company among other things... look it up - and of course the fact that all the cash generated by the sales of all the contraband people, arms and dope all ends up being "washed" in "legitimate financial institutions" - remember BCCI? or more currently think HSBC, Citi, Western Union - and the armies of Politicians, Lawyers, Academics, Accountants and Professionals who facilitate all of this bollocks... basically all this "crime" not only doesn't conflict with "legitimate business", in fact they are inter-related so thoroughly that you can't tell where one starts and the other begins.
But the book by Woodiwiss really does the job. He doesn't stay stuck behind the facade erected by the architects of this Racket Planet to keep us all from seeing what is going on. He moves us beyond the charade of "criminals" and "good guys" and shows us the truth that He who controls how these things are defined in the public discourse attains the power to hide their own mega-criminality behind a wall of propaganda and brainwashing.
He describes this con-game simply showing how imagining the concept of "Crime" is first captured by those who control the Media, the "moral" institutions and the Economy and then redefined by getting people to support political agendas criminalizing certain behaviors like drug use or gambling - or simply migrating North from one's homeland to find work as neo-slaves to escape economic ruin in one's own country caused by these self-same Masters.
Moralists and Preachers, Media Mouthpieces, Hacks etc. churn out miles of Panic based on racism, lies and whatever to freak people out and bring them into a state where they agree that if it wasn't for "those bad people" "out there" (read: niggers, chinks, wops, cholos, kikes, micks, spicks, etc.) all us "good people" (read: wanna-be white Protestant/Catholic upper-class wanna-be's - of whatever skin complexion/racial persuasion) would be SAFE and we could "walk the streets at night" and our Daughters wouldn't get pregnant before Marriage and etc.
The Panic is hyped concurrent with vigorous efforts to destroy any political organization by citizens which challenges the powerful Business Owners in their exploitation of labor and the environment for their own private gain which in turn leads to social conditions in which many are motivated by opportunity to profit from participating in the illicit markets created by the criminalization mentioned above. Nice trick. Perpetual motion machine of vice, corruption and self-fulfilling profit-cy.
...and guess who rakes in the dough? It ain't the dope peddler on the corner, although for awhile he/she may get some bling out of the deal for sure... before they are sent up or shot down in the street... really, where does all that money go? Gambling, prostitution, human smuggling, dope... all of that generates huge amounts of cash that end up in the Man's pockets in the end.
Woodiwiss' genius is to explain the real beauty of this set up... the re-definition of Crime itself so that no one can even discuss the subject and talk about the monstrous crimes that go by the name of:
BUSINESS. Tainted food, toxic waste, carbon emissions, exploited labor, tax evasions, mass swindles and frauds (can you say "STOCK DERIVATIVES" or "MORTGAGE BUBBLE"?)... or how about "ENDLESS WAR"??
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