I am back in the real world now, for the first time in over a week. Plugged back into the matrix. Going to the usual places to get my veggie juice and cappuccino. Pick up the mail and packages from the last week. Going back to the office. Talking to the average people on the street. Asking them how we did over the last six days. This is more of an anecdotal analysis. Which I think is important. Although in a few days we will all be briefed by Pyle with a very detailed media analysis which will tell us how we faired in the eyes of the people on a global scale. But from what I have gathered so far here in Miami from your average person is this: we succeeded in so far as we got the message across that “free trade or the FTAA” was a bad thing to some people and that people were protesting it. people also seemed to understand why it could be bad, danger to the environment, taking advantage of workers in poorer countries, and a potential of losing jobs in America. but people also walked away with the following perceptions that “it is a good thing that the protestors did not cause a lot of violence and disrupt the talks” [this is amazing when you break it down and think about it---aprox 35 to 50 men get together in a private, no-public-access meeting to discuss the future of over 800 million people and the average person on the street feels like it’s a good thing that “the protestors” weren't successful in shutting down the city and breaking the meeting up. this goes to show how easy it is to control people to feel exactly how you want them to feel but how they don't want to feel but they just don't know it—keep them uninformed and they won't know that they aren't on your side. And also continue to control the media to focus on the ideas of “protestors” and “demonstrations” rather than “the people” and also ideas like “violence” and “riots” and “anarchists” rather than “our rights” or “human rights” or “civil liberties” or “keeping our jobs” or “protecting our environment.”

Here is an example: a recent email I received from a friend on holiday:

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxx@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 xx:xx PM
To: xxxxxxxx@transcendence.com
Subject: Ola!

“>My dearest Fishy,
From Ixtapa ... relaxing and really enjoying being lazy and laid back ... hope all is well with you and that the riots have calmed down. I fly out to Orlando on Friday........”

And my response:

HI Love,

I am glad you are having fun in Ixtapa! Good times indeed. They were not riots. They were "the people" taking to the streets to try to defend all of our rights against the evil empire that is destroying the planet. Just so you know:) Same thing that happened in your beautiful city of Seattle back in '99.

Have fun in Mexico (where all the American jobs are going faster than you can say margarita!)
Love Me

Back in the office people are like “hey what happened to you? I saw you on the news? Are you o.k.?” I asked an associate in my office building “so Luis tell me honestly, did you get the perception from the last week that “the American people” were out there fighting for all of our rights against the evil empire? Or did you get an impression that there were just anarchists in the streets trying to cause riots and being trouble makers?” his answer? “Both. I think that it appears that there are some people that were there who cared about poor people and the environment. But the general perception is that they are freaks or hippies or anarchists and there isn't anything we can do anyway to stop what is inevitably happening.”