Who Runs The World

I'm at brunch for hours today. Sitting under the sun at my usual haunt. Eating an amazing omelet, ham, spinach, feta, and tomato. Sipped through three large iced cappuccinos. I've spent hours reading and studying the whole free trade issue this morning and into the afternoon. Mainly studying NAFTA and its devastating effects on humanity. How it has caused millions of people to lose their jobs here in America. How it has caused millions of people to lose their jobs in Mexico, thousands of farms and factories have had to close down. How there are now over 3000 large American companies who own factories in Mexico with some 1.4 million Mexicans working for them, mostly very young women earning 50 cents an hour with no benefits and no workers rights. This is what free trade means to Mexico and to Americans. Good thing? Doesn’t sound like it. I don't know. I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. I'm searching and searching to try to find the good in this. I want to believe in America still. I want to be a believer. I want to be a good American. just then the artisan calls me. asks how the show went last night. We talk. I tell her what I'm studying. That I'm putting up about 8 or so protesters at my house, kids with backpacks who are coming down here from all over the country for a few days at my house. I tell her what I am discovering about free trade. What I'm reading about.

She shares with me one month she spent with a man she almost married; she calls Mr. Constantinople. She cannot tell me his real name. she is sworn to secrecy. she met him at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale. She was a massage therapist. He is an oil barren billionaire who works for one of the princes of Saudi Arabia and travels with him and by his side night and day. he is the man who takes the orders for oil and places orders for oil. He is the number one negotiator They had rented out the entire resort for a month to live there. they brought with them an entourage of hundreds of people. many princes and princesses and all their many numerous wives. They were all all multi-billionaires---ten times over. They control all the oil in the Middle East. At least from the country of Saudi Arabia. She shared with me how she had never seen wealth like that before or such a blatant display of wealth. She spent a month with him. and all of them. she explained to me that it is nothing like we imagine or see in movies or TV. It is way beyond anything we could even imagine. She said that the princes do not even get up to get food or something to drink. It is all done for them. they do not dress themselves. They have up to ten servants who wait on them hand and foot every second of every day. if they want to read the paper that is three feet from them, they snap their fingers, someone gets the paper for them and then reads it to them. then they are told to shut up when the prince wants to stop listening. The wives and princesses have up to three people doing their nails at a time, doing their hair everyday, getting them dressed, walking them to the bathroom, anything you can imagine. The artisan said she found it horrible and sad and found these people were so completely twisted, narcissistic and helpless, and unconnected that it did not seem that they were humans. More like robots or creatures from a strange b movie. She said she felt no love, no soul, no sense of family, and no sense of honor or truth or honesty or realness in them. Their lives revolved around oil, their own royalty and self importance, making earning and spending money, self gratification, pleasure, and just this kind of droll boredom that dominated their day to day lives.
Babe so what are you telling me? What does this have to do with free trade and all that? I ordered my fourth cappuccino.

She kept going. the point is that I got very close to Mr. Constantinople. Suitcases of cocaine were always with them. Suitcases! she told me exasperated. Twenty men would get out of ten limos all carrying suitcases of cocaine and other drugs. You have to understand Fishy. they have so much money and have such power that they are above and beyond any laws the rest of us abide by. They own Saudi Arabia. They make the laws there and in all of the other Middle Eastern countries, but I then discovered that the same applied here in America, they are completely immune to all American laws as well. I kept thinking how can we all be here at one of the poshest swankiest most well known hotels and resorts in America right? and we’re all laying around outside by the pool all day and all night snorting cocaine off of everything in sight, everyone is doing every drug you can imagine. There are hundreds of women everywhere who are basically just sex slaves just laying around there to do whatever any of the princes ask them to do. and nothing is kept in secret. It is just this huge sex and drug party that goes on all day and all night for a month and every now and then Mr. Constantinople would have to do some business which entailed talking on the phone, then talking to the princes and then talking on the phone again to sell some oil. And its all illegal here in America but here we were doing it for a month in front of hundreds of the resort staff and everyone just acted like it was business as usual. I kept thinking to myself how is this going on in my own backyard?> how is this happening in Scottsdale Arizona/ what about the police or the mayor or the neighbors?

So did you ask him about it at all or did you just play dumb the whole time? you didn't want to ask how the hell they thought they could get away with all of that,’ I asked her.
Well I didn't play dumb Fishy.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, well I just you know was hypnotized by it all. I mean we were high the whole time. and drunk. and just total animal consciousness type stuff. just all sex and drugs and drinking and pleasure. So I would talk to him sometimes. He explained to me how there were very few people who controlled the entire world. Less than seven or eight men. And they ran basically the entire world. Every few days he would tell me more. he would explain to me that the Saudi princes the entire family were above and beyond any laws in any country in the world; almost entirely. They, along with a few other men---some from America and some from England---control the rest of the world. There are only like seven to ten of them I think he said.

She went on, but I stopped listening for a minute and reflected. This wasn't the first time I had heard this. I had heard this theory many many many times before from many other sources. We all have. it seems to be less a theory and more of a fact that just hasn’t ever bubbled to the surface of the mainstream yet. Most people write if off as conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo. But she was inside it. here she was recounting it from a whole other angle, not from the angle of some whacked out leftist liberal conspiracy theorist point of view, but from one of the men who was actually in the group. From the inside rather than from the outside. This is what was so fascinating to me. she had never studied this stuff before. the artisan is your typical hot sexy blond who has makeup parties at her house. She is just a sweet American girl. She probably thinks conspiracy theory is a movie with Mel Gibson. So she just kind of fell into this by accident. It wasn't like she was prone to this kind of thinking...

Well artisan what did you do? how did you react when you would hear this stuff?
Well at one point there was a night that I kind of had this emotional breakdown. Because I did love him. I thought I was in love with him. and I was almost like hypnotized by this lifestyle. But I felt my soul leaving me because it was just such a soulless scene but so tempting to a young girl. She laughs at herself for a moment. and the more I observed and thought about it all I just had this night by the pool maybe two weeks into it or three weeks I don't remember and I was very drunk, and all of a sudden I realized that they probably killed a lot of people all the time, did whatever they wanted to. so I asked him about that. and he started to laugh. Very loudly and he said that I was like an innocent flower, like a little girl who didn't know anything. And he thought it was precious. But I didn't think it was precious. I thought it was very scary and I started to panic. He was telling me how they make the decisions about everything all over the world. Who lives, who dies. Not just in the Middle East but in America too. What prices were set for everything we buy, what the nations’ economies are like, not just these princes but in general this small group of men, and that even what wars get fought all around the world. And who wins them. he said that everything we think about America is a lie. And that it is a myth. A safer myth than most other countries but our freedom as a people is just a total myth. And that our presidents and our politicians don't really do anything. That they think they do and that is what is so brilliant about it, but that if anyone stopped for a moment and starting researching it they would quickly see that it is this small group of the world’s richest men who control everything. And that is the way it has always been and always will be. And that that is just the way it is because money is what actually controls us, not people. or democracies, or laws, or rules, or voting, or politicians, or even God. And that yes that they kill people all the time.

And he laughed and laughed. And he just assumed that I would think that was alright. And that I would laugh too. Because they are in such a different world than we are. they have all this power and just do anything and everything they want to. and I'm just a simple American girl from Arizona who wants to be a Princess. So I became very petrified and I really panicked. I thought of my daughter and my family and realized that I had made a terrible mistake by being with him and wondered if I would get out alive. I began to throw up in the pool. I could feel and see as I looked around me that he was probably telling me the truth but it was not something I wanted to hear. it was too much information. It just kind of fell on me as I looked around that he was right. but this is something that you don't ever want to know, even though it is true. And so that got me very sick from being so scared and shocked. I passed out in the pool.

What did you do?

Well he was very sweet when he saw that I was sick. I calmed down. I took some pills he gave me and I went to sleep. I stayed with him till they left town because I was too frightened to leave him. I was supposed to meet him in Saudi Arabia a few days later with {her daughters name] but I never went.
He never called you?
No he never called me. I assume that he probably meets a lot of girls like me in every town he goes to, I mean he can have any girl in the world that he wants so I am sure he quickly forgot about me. Thank God.”

What a fucking story. The four cappuccinos were kicking in big-time. I was flying. Wired. I pointed out how we had had the biggest protests and demonstrations in the world in the entire history of humanity against America invading Iraq and it didn't do a thing last year. It didn't stop it. they did it anyway. it had nothing to do with America. It had to do with bush and Cheney and the secret companies they work for. Both of them came from oil companies and both of their campaigns were funded from oil companies and Enron of course. And no matter how obvious the evil is to everyone there is nothing that Americans can do about it. we are being held captive by these men and their intention to take over the country of Iraq.

I hung up with the artisan and continued reading about free trade and the upcoming FTAA meeting happening right here in Miami this week. will the protests do anything? This was the nature of my thoughts. Why were we going to protest if the world was already being held captive and controlled by seven to ten of the richest men? Is any of it true? Is it a conspiracy? Is it hogwash? Malarkey? Does it matter? I mean really matter? If I move somewhere very remote and far away from all of this could I escape it all? and just live in peace playing my guitars, smoking cigars, writing in my journals, snowboarding, raising a few kids maybe, teaching them how to play football, making love to my wife a few times a day, and just enjoying life without worrying about conspiracies or politics or making the world a better place? is this type of life possible for me now? or have I gone too far already? is it possible to go back to a blissful ignorance? like in high school when we were just hanging out and having fun?

Is it really a matrix of lies and deceit that we all live in? Can we pull the plug? Do we want to? what the hell can I really do about it anyway? will our protesting and demonstrating and letter writing and marching really do anything? Remember Venezuela? It didn't do anything for them. and did America come to their rescue? Hell no. the American government doesn’t care about democracy in the world. It cares about oil. And money. and power. but deeper still, is that bad? Is that wrong? we know from studying history that that's the way it has always been in this world. That is how nations rise to power and dominate our human civilization for brief periods of time. through brute force and massive murders and genocides, through lies and deception, through blackmail and corruption and enslavement. Every great empire was built this way, including our present American one. granted we have probably been the most peaceful and fair and just over time, but still, it hasn’t been an example of fair and equitable practices, that's for sure. Our text books and American folklore are just as filled with lies and untruths as those of the various countries that we claim to be enlightening and freeing around the world like Iraq.

So maybe this is just the way it is. only the strong will survive. What's that biological or anthropological term for it? natural selection/adaptation? The strong and powerful survive and the weak die off. And strong and powerful in the human/animal world implies implicitly doing whatever the fuck you have to do to survive so that means that if you need to murder an entire race of people because you want to steal their land you just do it and try to think of a good reason for it later but in the meantime the important thing is just to do it and get it over with. It occurred to me in that moment of deep thought about this that maybe its just me. I mean maybe the thing wrong is just me. like maybe I was born this really insane idealist. And that I was the one who was fucked up. walking around asking everyone hey why are you lying all the time and trying to act like you're not lying to us? and hey why are you allowing them to lie to us? and hey why are they murdering those people and why are we letting it happen? and why are we allowing them to invade that country???? Seriously. Maybe I'm just totally fucked up for not understanding that this really is the way of the world and the law of the land so to speak. Man, could it be? could it just be that its just me? that all this time that I've been telling myself that everyone around me is either just too ignorant to know what's really going on, or too cynical to think they can do anything about it, but that maybe I'm just like from another era, perhaps from our distant future, born into the wrong time in our civilization.

And everyone around me just kind of accepts it. but you know what? Its not true. Because the truth is that there are some fifty thousand protesters coming to Miami this week to try to stop this FTAA meeting from taking place. and you know what? Every year it gets more and more around America. These protests. It is going to get like the sixties again. but worse. Because we are getting smarter. I'm not the only one who sees how fucked up it all is. there are others. Its us versus them. it is the enlightened versus the barbarians. The barbarians are in control right now and they have hypnotized the ignorant masses into a dull complacency so even something as horrendous as the George w bush presidency can last as long as it has. The ignorant masses don't even notice how fucked everything is because they are too drugged up on television and awards shows and movies and alcohol and tax cuts and 3 second cuts to news stories that are of no importance and women kissing other women and all the other garbage. But more and more people are becoming enlightened. They are switching sides in droves. It is not uncool to be enlightened or informed anymore. In fact it is becoming mainstream. One day there is going to be another American revolution. And its not going to be America rising up against England. Its going to be the enlightened American people rising up against the evil and greedy multi-national corporations that have taken over this country.