The Omen: The Corporate Squeeze Tightens

Stephen L. Doll

1995

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletter, Mar. 1995, No. 133

The 1973 hit horror film, The Omen, the first of three in the trilogy on the fictional Thorn dynasty, depicts the embodiment of evil in the form of Damien Thorn, taking over the world through corporate manipulation. The series follows Damien from his somewhat improbable birth to a dog to his ultimate demise at the hands of the forces of "good." Prior to this happy circumstance, we see the consolidation of the megacorporation of Thorn Enterprises into a monopoly that holds sway over the welfare of the global population. As an example of the tactics used to cement this control, one scene shows Thorn engineering the blowing up of the Aswan Dam, cleverly hanging the deed on a radical terrorist group. In the wake of the disaster, who should show up with food, medical care, and disaster relief but--you guessed it--Thorn Enterprises.

The Omen trilogy was horrific fiction. What is happening now is fact. It is becoming quite clear to a growing number of researchers that the consolidation of power through manipulation of the world economy, so vividly portrayed in cinema, is even more horrible in its reality.

Various sources are waking up to the tremendous control the multinational corporations are wielding on economies around the world. Not only are a relative handful of the super-wealthy controlling the physical plant that provides the necessities of life, they are controlling the very thought processes of the peoples of the world.

One who has awakened to the danger is author, William Greider. In his book, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of America, Greider draws a stark picture of the aims of the New World Order, which is, in truth, nothing new; the plan has been in place for centuries. He speaks of multinational corporations as dictating world policy behind closed doors (again, nothing new). Free trade, Greider points out, just gives the corporations an excuse to grind every area of the world down to the lowest common denominator, leaving the multinationals to pick and choose the most deprived areas for their labor force. And the leaders of these nations, desperate for the infusion of capital, will do things, such as take on toxic wastes, allow polluting industries, and despoil their ecosystems to keep in hock to the big banks.

Eustace Mullins, in his Secrets of the Federal Reserve, offers further insight into the machinations of the banking elite. He details, for example, the roll of the Federal Reserve in precipitating the stock market crash of 1929 by pumping up the market and, with the help of the media, roping in the suckers to pull the rug out from under them. (The big guns were alerted to pull out of the market in March of 1929.) Also, World Wars I and II could not have been pulled off without generous financing from the European banking houses.

And what do we see now? In the midst of a recession, a frenzy of buying into the market, prompted by rock bottom interest rates set by--who else--but the Fed. When the market slides, it is pumped up again to keep the dollars rolling in. Lambs to the slaughter, smiling about it. The winners, however, won't be laughing on their way to the bank; they're already there. The losers--all the little investors who were duped into believing that the Price System is maintained for anyone but those who manipulate it--will be left to jump out of windows, or, in these violent times, more likely to strike out against those closest to them.

How have "they" done it? How was the businessification of the American mind carried out? How have the Price System masters of the game gained such sway over the population? How have they created a mindless, unquestioning generation of abject drones, bent on party, party, party? Technology, that's how.

How technology has played into the hands of the power elite is brought into sharp focus by Nicholas Von Hoffman. In his article, The Evil Coachman, (Penthouse magazine, October 1992), Hoffman writes of the "business-built cultural and social system", an entity that Hoffman says Aldous Huxley had pegged in his Brave New World, a vivid portrayal of corporate control run amuck. The population is kept under control by drugs, sex, and entertainment--as long as it generates revenue. Babies are taught from birth to fear things such as nature and books because they are things that can be enjoyed at little or no expense. By depriving fetuses of oxygen, control can be maintained by engineering morons to do the menial chores. Even those cultivated for normal intellect, however, are doped up with doses of "soma" with only the super-intelligent allowed to retain full possession of their faculties.

But there's a glitch, as Hoffman points out. In creating a generation of mindless automatons, done not by depriving fetuses of oxygen but by the sale of brain-draining diversions, our real-life Brave New Worlders have engineered out the thinking people. Now that the technology is in place and the corporate moguls have bent it and the population to their consumptive will, who will run it? Who will fix it if it breaks down? Are we facing a not-so-brave new world in which the necessary information is held by a select few? Are the corporate moguls and their henchmen those few? Or will the technology, engineered to keep the populace in the corporate thrall, become too unwieldy even for its masters?

Hoffman writes, "Such an anomaly. At the same time that the sciences push ahead and the life sciences--biology, genetics, cytology, and so on--explode every which way into new discovery and accomplishment, the society as a whole is in growing danger of not being able to sustain itself. At the rate we are going, we won't be able to run, much less repair the machines that our parents and our grandparents invented and passed on to us. We may become barbarians in our own homes, brute primitives wondering at our own possessions and the magic they make...with no conception of what goes on under the lids and covers of the machines we depend on for our health and comfort." No conception, that is, except on the part of the power elite who, well aware of what they are doing, have trained their loyal automatons in the every-man-for-himself halls of Price System academe.

Why else would such a publication as Country Living magazine carry an article exhorting businesses to involve themselves with schools, and the schools to welcome them with open arms? The game has gone sour. Business has been so busy using technology to create mindless automatons, drones to Price System profit-seeking, they are now facing the consequences of dealing with a generation of slushheads, engineered by violence, aloofness and reverence for the buck.

As Hoffman puts it, "Businessmen...did not intend to be the Evil Coachman seducing America's high school Pinocchios to sweet pleasure land. They did it anyway, but for the money, not for the ideology."

Right. They did it for the money. Just like they got generations hooked on cigarettes and body-cheating sugar. (The connection between the big banking houses and the sugar industry makes a fascinating study in itself.) Just like we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and ravaging the landscape because they wanted to keep selling cars and houses and fast food. Just like not finding cures for diseases but providing snake oil to keep the sufferers coming back and spending billions. Just like selling arms with one hand while offering the olive branch with the other.

Sure, they never meant for environmentalists to get beat up and terrorized by the puppets they send forth to do their bidding, because they've convinced them it's the nasty tree-huggers, not technology or cheap foreign labor, that cost them their jobs. They just did it for...the money. The money and the power it engenders is their ideology.

Consider the corporate media barrage. As Hoffman points out, "Two-year-old American babies are tested out by marketers to be brand-conscious about the clothes they wear, and six-year-olds are as attuned to trademarks and logos as an American adult." The smiling clown, high-energy dancers, and slinky models pushing fast food, fast clothes, and fast cars wouldn't steer you wrong.

Corporations are your friends. So ingrained are they in the psyches of advanced civilizations, so enthroned have they become (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln's grim prophecy), the last thing a four-year-old girl was heard to utter as she lay dying in the rubble of an Egyptian earthquake was, "Daddy, I want a Pepsi." Corporations supply all our needs, bring good things to life. They even sponsor the various mind-numbing diversions we rush to, to forget what's being done to us, and what we are doing to each other.

Sure they bring good things to life. And the same folks who brought you light bulbs and toasters have brought you numerous depressions, recessions, World Wars I and II and are presently consolidating their efforts to bring the entire world under their beneficent wing.

Now they must deal with the consequences of their actions and try to salvage some measure of intelligence and initiative out of the dregs. At the same time, they must keep youth sufficiently drugged to prevent them from seeing business for the scam it is. They must deal with a generation hooked on stimulating its own pleasure centers; any service provided by its members is something that just must be endured to produce the end result, an endless orgy of external stimulus.

Another point Hoffman brings out is the shift in emphasis as to what defines a role model. In the 20s, when Albert Einstein came to the United States, he received a hero's welcome, in stark contradistinction to the obscurity afforded scientists now. Who are the most revered? The entertainers, the ones who make us briefly forget what is being done to us and what we are doing to each other. Here, and in the drugs, the booze, the never-ending party is Huxley's "soma", escapism in full swing.

Nicholas Von Hoffman points out the steady retrograde of the educational process. This dovetails nicely with a new world order. Make education so boring, so regimented that kids will be driven away from it, creating a whole generation of low-skill, low-wage workers. Meanwhile, put higher education out of reach of all but the elite, who will naturally pledge fealty to their corporate benefactors. Above all, ballyhoo the "rights" to individual property into some sort of religious status (National Wildlife Federation president, Jay Hair, speaks of the "sacred" nature of private ownership), the highest aspiration, the most noble pursuit--and justification for anything. Herein lies the power of the corporation.

That corporations are sleazy operators needs no support. The shadowy halls of corporate history are littered with chronicles of exploitation of people, plunder of resources, goon squads to scare workers out of forming labor organizations, sweat shops, rip-offs of the public, government programs to subsidize corporate quest of cheap labor in foreign countries, and just plain nastiness. One single volume, Sierra Press' Corporate Crime in America, documents environmental misdeeds of 34 large corporations. The author's lament that the biggest problem in dealing with the nameless and faceless is that it's hard to pin down miscreants who have no names or faces. And these are our benefactors?

The Price System is a nonentity, a belief system. A scheme to dominate the world must have its protagonists. It must have human bodies to make it live and breathe. The Omen had its own in the demonic Damien. The real-life Thorns may be found in the handful of corporate manipulators who are even now making their move. These are the ultimate "they."

In The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, Mullins traces the history of the "they" from the shadowy recesses of a Hamburg goldsmith shop right up to the lofty towers of Manhattan. As an indication of the importance of this work, 19 publishers refused to touch it. When it finally appeared in a German version in the early 1950s, 10,000 copies of it were burned, the only book to be burned in Germany since World War II.

How do "they" control? They get the population to BUY INTO IT. Why resort to military might to subjugate people when, by appealing to their baser behavior patterns, "they" can create partners in crime? Not only is it okay to grab as much as you can. It's patriotic. It's your duty. It's okay to take advantage of other people. It's okay to kick the guy when he's down. Hey, he's the loser. He didn't have what it takes. He doesn't deserve anything better. As behaves the corporation, when the corporate entity is looked to as the guiding light, so behaves the individual. Self-serving is not only condoned, not to do so is at best stupid, and at worst subversive.

That "they" have been at work for a long time is chronicled in Mullin's book. The agenda for domination, outlined over two centuries ago, included: "the use of alcoholic licquors, drugs, moral corruption, and all vice to systematically corrupt youth of all nations;" "Wars should be directed so that the nations engaged on both sides should be further in our debt;" "Candidates for public office should be servile and obedient to our commands so they may readily be used;" "Propaganda--their combined wealth would control all outlets of public information;" and "Panics and financial depressions would ultimately result in World Government, a new order of one world government"--with Damien in the driver's seat, of course.

With convincing documentation, Mullins goes on to link these aims to current corporate control in the United States via the Federal Reserve System, itself a private concern consisting of a handful of powerful banking interests who hold interlocking directorates with a large portion of the major corporations.

If this isn't enough to scare the willies out of any thinking person (the few who are left), consider the enlightening volume Blood in the Streets, a handy investor's guide for scooping up profits when humanity has been ground down to its nadir (the title is drawn from the Rothschild axiom that profits are highest when the blood is running in the streets). Or consider the recent revelations that the recent collapse of the British economy was indeed brought about by currency speculators, computer-wielding "killer bees" who skimmed the British treasury for six billion dollars through their manipulations. These are the latter-day conquerors, the controllers. Where military might served their antecedents, control of purchasing power is now the linchpin of their game of domination.

There is no essential difference in motive between these people and the Atillas, the Genghis Khans, the Alexanders, the Napoleons. Where the skull on the post marked the conquests of the savage, their modern-day counterparts measure their achievements in how many lives they may control. Technology has merely broadened their scope. Had any of these warlords had the niceties of electronic funds transfer at their disposal, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. They could have ruled the world from their laptops, which is precisely what their descendants in spirit are doing now.

The New World Order. The corporate Omen is on the move, with technology as its instrument and money as its avatar. None will escape.

So blinded are the Price System power brokers to anything but profit, it is tempting to think that in their blindness they don't see the dinosaur crushing its eggs, that the technology they are using to dominate the world is leading to the demise of the very power base upon which they have laid their strategy.

"They", however, are very clever individuals, if ruthless. It is entirely possible that the power brokers are well aware that the Price System has run its course. These individuals may well see that the money game is up, that the new game is technology. However, the Price System masters are survivalists. As the Price System goes, they will use it to corner the technology, creating a future "Technology System" by which they can manipulate the population. Obviously, this strategy is already in place. This is an even more frightening aspect. At least the Price System was only a concept. The technological control of real things is quite a different matter.

Rather than punish those who step out of line by removing their monetary purchasing power, which people at least had a possibility of getting somewhere else, retribution will be direct--a revocation of tangible goods and services.

Before the Price System has been played out, however, what are we to expect? What happens when the commercialization of the human race has finally cemented itself into place, when the corporate rule of the road of "what's in it for me" becomes every man's litany in all dealings with his fellow humans? It will be a less nice world. People will be resigned to this fact. Lousiness will become a way of life--lousy goods, lousy behavior. Insensitivity will rule the roost. With backs against the wall, the majority of Americans will be forced into predatory action. Everyone will be a salesperson. Every interpersonal relationship will be entered into on the basis of do unto others only that which will do more for you.

All the stops will be out. Whatever exercise may serve to turn the wheels of finance will not only be condoned, but lauded. And the saddest part of all is that the delusion has been so meticulous, so complete, that those same people, because their leaders tell them that to do so is patriotic and for the best, will buy into it. Pass the soma, please.

Do the terms "sacrifice" and "make do with less" ring any bells?

When the final takeover takes place, we can kiss goodbye all thoughts of civil rights, consumer rights, and environmental protection. Americans will be so desperate for employment under any circumstances, employee benefits and any type of employee protection won't even get a mention in the history books, which will glorify the role of the corporations in the "civilization" of the world. Entire continents will be gutted for the production of cheap throwaway goods to be sold to the impoverished masses on other continents.

Bottom line, the Price System is not a distribution mechanism; it is a method for withholding a usable commodity until enough gain accrues to the holder. As the world descends into a market philosophy, each will be conditioned to look upon the other, not as another human being, but as someone to be chiseled. We will become desensitized to the needs of others unless by meeting that need we gain an "edge." Extrapolate this onto a huge scale, and you have the corporate philosophy.

And there is nothing we can do about it, because we've all been sold into it. Physicist or poet, pirate or philosopher, we're part of the game. We may claim freedom of speech, but when that freedom leads us to action that threatens any sector of the Price System, be it an individual's "job" or a corporation's survival, the speech is stifled, the speaker discredited.

Shortly before his assassination, and following the passing of the National Banking Act of 1863, Abraham Lincoln made the following chilling prophecy: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed."

With the limited technology of his day, Lincoln could not see that what he foresaw for the United States would one day shape up for the entire world. The Money Power he referred to is in full swing, playing on prejudices, building barriers between peoples, exploiting the earth and its inhabitants on a mad helter-skelter scramble for world domination. And there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it, because we must all dance to the same financial tune. We can't vote it out, because the voting process is permeated with it. We may protest against it by word, may chafe against its indignities, but in the end we all must mount the auction block.

It looks bad--very bad--for a continued existence of an advanced civilization anywhere in the world. The chief Price System protagonists are now hell-bent on cementing their grasp on the people and resources of the world, a descent into the Dark Ages. Only with the aid of technology, it will be on a global scale.

Howard Scott, founder of Technocracy, observed that the next fascist regime will not originate with the military. It will come from Wall Street--a financial fascism. Instead of fear of police state reprisal, and abject obedience to a ruling militia, the fear will be for the loss of life through the loss of necessities, and the loyalty will be to the corporate masters.

Is there hope for America? Yes, but only one. The people of America must wake up to what is being done to them. The people of North America must assert their continentality. They must divorce themselves from the financial system that is enabling the corporate structure to enslave them along with the rest of the world. The installation of a Technate, with guaranteed income to all, and a replacement of the current method of commodity distribution by scarcity valuation with a distribution system based on energy, is our only option.