Perfidious Albion

I had a feeling that most people at the Physicist's Conference in Venice supported us. Against all expectations we got a standing ovation at the end for what Steve had presented. The applause for him appeared to be more than just a gesture of respect for his stature in the scientific community as a renowned professor in the field of theoretical physics. In spite of the initial boos and heckling the applause in the end was evidently an infinitely greater acknowledgment of what we stood for and what we were trying to accomplish than Stravinsky had received on his opening night of the Rite of Spring.

Ross, our second man in scientific authority on this diplomatic mission, said that we should celebrate, because we had achieved a victory against the strongest possible opposition, namely that of the scientists who had worked on the project that we canceled, and then turned it upside down on them. Still, unlike everyone else, I didn't feel that much like celebrating. Something was up that was troubling me. Something wasn't right. Something was in the air that was hard to put ones finger on, something that dominated the background that could now no longer be ignored, like the danger of an avalanche in the mountain after a heavy snowfall. We had dared to do what had not been done since the days of the League of Cambrai in 1509. Like the Renaissance powers had threatened Venice with extinction, the leading slave-trader and looting empire of this time, we had dared to declare war against the modern fondi and had done it symbolically on their own home ground, right at the heart of Venice.

We had done precisely what I had recognized that the Renaissance powers had done wrong. We had repeated their mistake, their crucial mistake that became their undoing. Steve's speech at the physicist's conference was in all respects a hidden declaration of war against the fondi. I had a feeling that we would be paying a steep price for this, and possibly for a long time to come.

As it was, we received the fondi's response in short order. There was a letter waiting for me the next evening before our departure. The letter had been stuck under our hotel room door while we were out for supper. It was from the man from the fondi. The letter was addressed to me directly.

"Congratulations," the letter said, "you have won this battle. The fondi have lost this round, but don't celebrate yet. You have not won the war, and you never will. There are other methods the fondi will now use, and other times they will select to destroy America and the USSR. Think about that. Actually they like what is now taking place. Having you as an opponent adds a little spice to the fight, though you will never win. You won't win, even with all the backing that your Uncle Sam can give you. You simply are not in the same league with the fondi. Also, you are a fool. You should have found a way to negotiate with the Russians to keep the SDI alive for both country's sake."

The person that wrote the letter wrote that this was not the fondi's view, but his own.

"The fondi's long-range target is China, not Russia," he wrote. "Russia is useful to them as a trigger to draw the USA into a nuclear confrontation that will not only destroy both nations, but create the background in which their other stooges can destroy China, India, Iran, and Indonesia in one fell swoop. Your friend, Steve, was right in what he said, but he didn't think far enough ahead. He didn't see the danger to China. His bungling proves my point, that you are amateurs when it comes to geopolitical games."

He remarked sarcastically that this is what we will always be, amateurs.

"China is the fondi's biggest foe because of its people's commitment to develop their country into the richest on the continent, and to develop with them the entire Asian continent. China is at the point today that the USA was in its early days, before it had become the envy of the world. If the British Empire hadn't broken America's republican spirit, the American people would have helped to develop the whole world by now. The fondi's feudal way of living and looting the world would have been history. But now, they rule the world. This is why they target China now, to be destroyed. If China's unfolding drive for self-development is echoed throughout Asia, the rest of the world will follow suite. When this happens, the fondi's days are over. The fondi won't allow this to happen."

The man wrote bluntly, perhaps honestly.

"It is unfortunate that China must be destroyed," he wrote, "and India likewise for its enormous development potential, and that Russia and the USA must be sacrificed as a means for the fondi to be able to do away with China and India. But such is the price that the world will be required to pay for the fondi's survival and for their quest to achieve World-Empire status. Also, let me assure you that there is nothing anyone can do to prevent this from happening. You may have prevented a nuclear war last week, and you may have prevented a new one from erupting next week, but you cannot prevent the fondi from attaining their goals. So far, you have been helping them, and they expect more of the same help from you. In the New World that you have just created, the fondi may use the same divide and conquer process against Russia, China, and USA, that they have used so successfully against Africa. Also, you should realize that the destruction of Africa has barely begun. The fondi do not really have to use nuclear weapons to destroy anyone, although they may do so. In fact, ideally, they won't need to destroy anything at all."

He pointed out in his letter that the fondi's desire is to simply depopulate the regions that they want to control, as they have always done, by creating poverty. Poverty kills as powerfully as the nuclear bombs do, he pointed out in the letter.

"Just watch what will happen in the Great Lakes region of Africa, which has the richest mineral deposits in the world," he continued in the letter. "The fondi will bring in their mercenary armies to conquer whichever country they want. Whichever population foolishly stands in the way, will be wiped out. This is what can be accomplished with power, and there is nothing that you can do to stop the fondi once the process has begu, because you don't have any real power. Naturally, Russia may well be dealt with in the same way that Africa is already being dealt with to some degree. This is certainly possible without the force of nuclear weapons. You must look at nuclear weapons as merely a diversion. At first the fondi destroy their targets politically, then economically, then financially, and finally they will destroy them biologically once their food production capability is destroyed. So, who needs nuclear bombs? Consider them as a diversion to hide the real process. My point is that it is impossible for anyone to build technological defenses against this kind of processes the fondi control, because fundamentally, the fondi's processes aren't technological processes. You have killed the SDI as a technological process. That's all you did. You didn't even come close to detecting the real process.

"Russia, of course, may now be wiped out. It lost its usefulness. It appears to be no longer of any significant advantage for the fondi to allow the Soviet Union to survive. You may have just signed Russia's death warrant. The USA will likely be dealt with in a similar manner when the time is ripe. The American people, themselves, will help the fondi to accomplish this. You know yourself how stupid people can become with the right kind of 'incentive.'"

I could imagine him laughing to himself, writing this letter. "Your people will sell their life for a penny," he wrote. "If this 'incentive' doesn't work, the fondi will agitate the Russians once more into a nuclear confrontation with the USA. Either way, when the dust settles, the fondi will take over what is left of both countries, and China and India will be wiped out in due course. Then the fondi will be the masters of the Earth. This is why they have pushed so hard for the development of nuclear bomb in the first place. You may think that the USA developed the atom bomb by its own accord. Don't kid yourself. The USA was much too moral for that at the time. The fondi pushed the USA into this Manhattan project, 'kicking and shoving,' and with a whole lot of lies, lies about Germany's immanent breakthrough that was known to be a lie. China and India, of course, will be wiped out once the nuclear weapons fire is lit. The fondi's men in high places have a plan in place in America for more than 15,000 targets to be nuked in the first round."

He wrote that fondi also have a similar setup prepared for the Middle East. "The fondi have a powerful fool in the Middle East," he wrote, "that they can rely on to scurry up enough of a pretext for a nuclear fire storm that will wipe out most of the existing populations in that part of the world. Afterwards the fondi will pick up what is left, especially the oil."

The man pointed out in the letter that all of this is easily done. "A few dozen bombs will be enough to depopulate the Middle East. Just think of it! A few dozen of the several hundred nuclear bombs that Israel has stockpiled will be sufficient to depopulate the Middle East. Of course, the rest have also targets attached to them.

"As you can see," wrote the man from the fondi, "little by little, the fondi will control all the world's resources while much of the world's population gets wiped out. The process is not unknown to you. It is laid out in principle, though rather softly, in your government's NSSM200 document of 1974. You should study this document. It describes the fondi's game plane. That is why there is so much emphasis on ethnic separation and indigenous identities. Ethnically fractured backgrounds are ideal for breaking up nations, for destroying their sovereignty, for developing terrorist factions that can start wars on demand or unleash ethnic 'cleansing' of targeted depopulation. War is also what you will see on an ever larger scale and in places you would never suspect wars would break out."

At the end of the man's letter was another statement of sheer arrogance, as he pointed out that "of course" there is nothing that any of us would be able to do to prevent any of this from happening. "The fondi's plans will be carried out even if they must recruit different allies every year. Should you be able to influence some of their present allies to break away, this won't be a hindrance to the fondi. They will throw those away and recruit new ones. That is why you cannot touch them. The fondi have no permanent allies. They only have a permanent objective for total world domination and complete ownership. They will keep at it for as long as it takes, until their goal is reached. They will grind any adversary into the dust by this constant shifting and renewed attacks, and they do it when their target least expect them to. There simply isn't any power in existence that can stand against the fondi long enough, especially not you."

I could almost hear him laugh at us. "My advise to you," he wrote, "is to keep this letter handy as a reference to verify my predictions when they are coming true, because every one of them will come true."

The letter wasn't signed. As soon as I read it, I tucked it away in a reaction of shame and didn't let anyone else see it. Eventually, though, it occurred to me that Steve should have a look at it. This meant that everyone would read it, too.

Steve just shook his head as he read it. "The letter doesn't tell us anything that we do not already know," he said and laughed, "but the arrogance is disturbing." Steve laughed. But he laughed with some apparent reservations as he folded the letter up and handed it to Ushi who read it and passed it on to Ross.

Steve said to me after everyone read the letter it that it occurred to him that the letter was really an invitation for me to meet with them. "They want to reveal more," he said, "but not in writing. You must go back to the place near the bridge were we were ambushed. You must go there tonight, preferably right now. I have done my part at the conference when I launched the big shockwave that you requested. Well the shockwave is moving. Now it's your turn to deal with the consequence. This means, you'll have to go and meet the vultures. And who would be better qualified than you? After all, you're Uncle Sam's trained diplomat. I am only a scientist." Steve laughed after that. "Do you want me to come along?" he added.

"I am going alone," I said. "There is more integrity in doing this alone, rather than by committee."

Sylvia didn't concur. Ushi likewise said that it was far too dangerous. Ross disagreed. Ross said if they wanted to kill us, they would have done it by now. Tony bravely volunteered to come along, but I couldn't accept this offer either. I suggested that the fondi would expect me to come alone. They won't harm me. After what we put on the official plate, harming anyone of us would be too great an exposure for them. They want to negotiate. That is, they want to give us the marching orders. They'll make threats of course. That's to be expected in the worlds of empire. Nor will they play their game openly. This, too, is understood."

"I think this could get interesting," said Steve.

Reluctantly Sylvia agreed.

So, off I went, alone through the dark narrow streets towards Piazza San Marco. The piazza was nearly deserted except for the ever-present pigeons. The huge cathedral at the end of the large disserted square rose eerily against the dark sky. In an attempt to banish the deep-creeping fear that this mood inspired the song from a long ago musical came to mind: "Feed the birds, tuppens a bag, tuppens a bag." I focused my thoughts onto the pigeons and onto the song from the musical: "Feed the birds, tuppens a bag; tuppens a bag;" Oh how lucky those birds were, I thought. Still, I also realized that ignorance isn't bliss. We had come to this city to change the world, to make it a safer and more livable place. That's what our being in Venice was all about, and we came well equipped to make a decisive contribution. Perhaps our success was bigger than we realized, so that it caused such a strong reaction from the fondi that they went ballistic over what we have put in place.

At my destination I found a bench facing the sea. It wasn't occupied. Now, all I had to do was wait.

Barely ten minutes had passed when a man joined me. His appearance was like that of any other tourist, carrying a small plastic shopping bag. He looked at me, smiled, and took a large chocolate bar out of the bag that he broke apart into small chunks and offered one to me. "I am William Palmerston," he introduced himself, "you were probably expecting me. I suppose you will not know who I am, but your friends will fill you in, later. For now my name is not important. What is important to you is what I am going to tell you." He looked at me for a few moments in silence, than added, "I suppose you didn't bring a tape recorder, because of the short notice." He reached into his bag and produced one, and handed it to me. He turned it on to record. "I am going to tell you about the future," he said, "and why it must be the way it will be."

He leaned back and made himself comfortable like a parent might before reading a bedtime story to the children. He sighed somewhat as if he despised telling stories to children, even though it was a task that had to be performed.

Searching for words he began quietly and slowly, and with a less than respectful tone of voice. "The current global political situation," he said, "can be likened to the movements of continental plates. We are experiencing tectonic changes. We are now seeing the final denouement of the processes unleashed in 1914. We are seeing processes involving the break-up of huge empires. Russia is breaking up, and we see the dying gasps of the old Czarist control over Central Asia, with the sudden emergence of nationalities that no one heard of for centuries."

He suggested of course that this wasn't happening on its own, but emphasized that it was happening, and would continue to be happening as the result of a chain of events unleashed by "the Empire." He said "the main thrust of British Foreign Policy is, without question, aimed at breaking up Russia, Indonesia, and "other empires." He cited Indonesia as an example, which he said is a natural fault line in the tectonic shifting, in which entire empires simply disappear.

He explained that the political tectonic shifts are actually occurring backward from the way they are commonly understood in geologic terms. Geologically, it is understood that the tectonic plates of the Earth are in motion, and where they meet one plate is pushed under the other. He said that in the political tectonic process the reverse happens. He explained that his empire was in the process of overlaying all the other empire plates, which are then pushed into the ground by the sheer weight of the overriding imperial tectonic plate.

"In Indonesia," he said, "East Timor is a fault line. If East Timor goes, then Aceh will go the same way, and then, what about the other islands? The fact is that Indonesia has no logic for existence. It is an empire that was formed in the process of combat against another empire. We are seeing the collapse of large empires, like the Soviet Empire, that were formed in fights against other empires."

He said that as a consequence of this, new small nations were emerging. "Don't only look at the growing autonomy of Scotland and Wales as the sign of the times, look also at Central Asia where you can see the assertion of tiny little Khanates, like the Khanate of Khokand, that have not been heard of for 500 years. For that matter, look at Daghestan, or at the sub-sections emerging in Georgia. The huge old tectonic plates of empires are shifting and fracturing and ar breaking up."

He advised a careful study of the centuries of battle between the Roman/Byzantine and Persian empires, in order to get a better grasp of what is going on today, because, as he said, this is "absolutely fundamental to British policy," which he said is designed by the fondi behind the scene to encourage the process of the "break-up of empires."

He spoke about nations as empires, and those nations standing in the way of his empire. He spoke about the Soviet Union as the Russian Empire, and the People's Republic of China, as the Chinese Empire. He said: "British foreign policy, for the last 200 years, has been based on one central idea, the break-up of other empires. The idea of sowing divisions among the Arab states is therefore axiomatic to the British Foreign Office. The Foreign Office is obsessed for example with breaking up the hold that Russia has on Central Asia, as the Empire requires.

"Look at the popularity of the books of Peter Hopkirk," he continued. "There is a deep fascination with these matters in Britain, which we have developed ages ago. Any encroachment toward India or Turkey is therefore regarded as antithetical to British interests, just as we wish it to be."

Then he leaned back some more and chuckled: "Perfidious Albion is alive and kicking," he said. "The British Foreign Office has a certain agenda. It's an old agenda still continued. It's, divide and rule." He repeated the last words twice, "divide and rule, divide, and rule!"

I didn't answer him. I was stunned. He spoke of nations as empires, which his empire was determined to exterminate by breaking them up into tiny regions that would then be incorporated into his empire, so that there would remain but one all-embracing World-Empire in the end; his grand Empire supported by globalized feudal looting.

I understood well what this meant. It meant that many more wars would be required by the fondi to achieve their coveted goal to extinguish the nations. It meant that their intended series of killing wouldn't be over until China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Iran, the USA, France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, even Canada, no longer existed in their present form as sovereign nation states.

He had suggested that every major nation on the planet is already slated to be eliminated from off the face of it, and set up to be fractured to pieces. He stated bluntly that no one in the world could stop the fondi's empire from doing its thing, especially not us. He made us look hopelessly small.

I asked him why he was so freely telling me of his empire's most secret plans. I could understand his reasons for wanting his empire to be the only ruling empire on the planet. But why was he telling me about it?

His answer again, was totally stunning. He laughed and said that he wanted me to come to his side.

Me, supporting his side? This sounded like a bad joke, an insult even. I told him that this would never happen. He insisted that it would. Then he laughed again. He said that it would happen in time. He predicted that I would never forget this night's meeting for as long as I lived. I would certainly remember it when the genocide operations begin, which will be initiated with horrible wars for tribal or ethnic "liberation" around the world; or wars for clashes of civilizations that would soften the ground; or wars that would destroy the USA directly and preferably by its own hands.

He told me that I would most certainly remember his words then, because I would know what kind of forces are moving behind the scenes, forces of political tectonics, forces of empires grinding over other empires, as he referred to the nations, by which millions would perish. He also predicted that I would then recall his telling me that there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to stop the tectonic movements, that our only option was to surrender to its force. He predicted that I would come begging to him one day in order to be able to do something to spare the lives of humanity, or at least some of them. He suggested that my coming to him wouldn't be an act of surrendering in real terms, but would merely be a recommitment of myself to the democratization of humanity, as he called the process of turning nations into a fractured world of isolated tribes or environmentally defined enclaves. He said that I would always remember that his empire doesn't fundamentally want any wars, that it merely wants humanity's compliance, and that it will get it one way or another, with or without "torture," and with or without me.

He said that he was sure though that someone like me would want to help his empire to minimize the torture. He said that I might even be able to fulfill my most cherished goal this way, that of preventing a global nuclear war. He reminded me that I already had done so once, by spoiling his empire's cruise missile surprise that was designed to put the whole USA into a state of crisis, and paralyze it. Paralyzing a nation always opens its doors for a deep penetration. He said that this is what terrorism is designed to do.

"Unfortunately it didn't work this time," he said. "It failed not because the weather was so bad that they had to launch the cruise missile from a closer distance to shore, nor did it fail because the launch had been observed." He said that there were other reasons involved why it failed. He also conceded some things don't always turn out the first time around, but he added that they always do turn out in the end.

He explained that usually it doesn't cost very much to try, so why shouldn't they take a few risks? He pointed out that somebody else always supplies the material resources anyway, as well as the men that become sacrificed in the process.

"This makes terrorism extremely cheap in comparison to what it can accomplish," he said. He even said that it was right for his empire to employ terrorism for such a noble goal as 'protecting' humanity. He said that I would agree with him some day on this point, including that a strong and iron-fisted imperial rule is the only platform on which humanity will be able to survive in the long run. He said that without imperial rule and its determination to reign in technological progress to a sustainable level, humanity would wipe itself out by the force of its technologies. "The technologies have already enabled mankind to increase its numbers way beyond what the Earth can support," he said. "When this happens both the Earth and mankind are in danger together and everyone may die," he concluded. "That is why a strong empire is needed to 'manage' the world. Depopulation by force may be distasteful to you, but really high-minded people, like you have the potential to become, can understand the necessity for it. Surely, something deep inside you tells you that this is so. Someone has to make the hard choices, even if the outcome 'stinks.'"

It took me a long time before I could respond to the man. I was too stunned by his arrogance and his brutality, and his total lack of humanity. Still, I needed this dialog. I needed it to continue. I had a golden opportunity presented to me to talk some sense into someone in high places, to reason with him about truth, about the value of humanity and about the dignity of human life. I had no idea if this would be possible. I felt that if I could get one idea across to him, one single aspect of a single universal principle by way of a constructive dialog, I might win a great victory, greater than anything that has been achieved at the conference.

I told him that I perceived that he wanted to create global poverty by which he expects humanity to become corrupted into becoming his empire's slaves as it had been during the darkest ages of unbridled feudalism. I told him that this would drive humanity back to a life of misery and starvation by which half of humanity would die. I suggested that this is what the world would be like without technological progress and cultural development.

He asked me with some obvious surprise why I must always insist on defending humanity. Didn't I realize that humanity is only a tiny part of the living system of the Earth, and that we cannot sacrifice the Earth for humanity, that it must be the other way around? He said that humanity must be kept in chains, be divided, conquered, and be ruled over, or else it will make the world its playground, as it has already done to some extent, and will take from the Earth whatever it wants to in order to support its prosperous living.

God, what could I say to counter this argument of insanity in a way that would make sense to him? I suggested to him that he was a hypocrite and for good reasons, because when humanity were to achieve its prosperous living, then it would not have to take its living from the Earth at all, but would create with the resources of its intelligence as human beings what the Earth itself can never provide. I suggested to him that if this were prevented, as he aims to do, then the Earth would indeed be too small. I told him that by itself the Earth could support no more than 10% of the present population. The rest is supported by technologies derived from scientific and technological development.

I stopped and laughed at the emerging thought. It seemed that I finally figured him out. I told him that if scientific and technological progress were to be fully allowed and actively promoted, they would create a richer world for humanity than we can yet imagine, with vastly larger populations in every part of the world. It suggested to him that the Earth would indeed become too small when this happens, as he keeps saying. Except it wouldn't be too small for mankind. It would be too small for the fondi. It would leave no room for the fondi to have an empire. I pointed out that mankind would find its world infinitely richer and more spacious, and more beautiful, so much so that the imperials wouldn't find the smallest niche to exist and have the slightest chance for their empires to continue looting society as they do today.

"Is this what you really mean with the world becoming too small? Is that what you are terrified of?" I asked. "That's what you really mean when you say that the world is becoming too small, isn't it? Human progress would leave you no room for your looting insanity to flourish. That's what you are afraid of. That's why human progress terrifies you so much that you try to stomp it into the ground at every opportunity you get. Isn't that so? Your fondi and all the world's would-be imperials would become an extinct species."

I asked him if this is what he is really scared of. I suggested that he be honest in answering, at least to himself. I pointed out to him that it appears to me that he is prepared to destroy every nation in the world with the weight of his empire, through divisions and wars, for no other reason than to protect an imperial machine that has no right to exist since the destruction of humanity has been made the foundation for its existence.

I pointed out to the man that his perception is all upside down when he insists that Indonesia has no natural foundation, simply because it was born out of the death of an empire. I pointed out to him that it is really HIS Empire that has no right to exist, because the policies that are necessary for its existence impose the death sentence on humanity. I pointed out that his empire is a disease that humanity must cure itself of, in order to bring light to the world.

He just laughed and laughed. "Ah, so you understand us a tiny bit," he said in a mocking tone of voice. "I had expected that much of you. That is why I invited you here. You stand way above 99.9% of society in that regard, which doesn't know anything."

"So you want me to join you in order to prevent me from educating society. You want to stop me in I open my eyes further until I figure you out completely, isn't that so?"

Palmerston, or whatever his name was, laughed more intensely now. "This is really getting funny," he said. "You are far too naïve to ever figure us out. The whole of humanity hasn't figured us out. It puzzled over us for half a millennium without getting anywhere, and you want to do this in a single lifetime? That's getting funny. I could tell you exactly what we are about, and you still wouldn't understand it, because you are not accustomed to thinking in broad historic terms. You wouldn't understand, because it would be unbelievable to you."

"Try me!" I interrupted him.

"Ok, tell me then, what has been the focus of all the wars in the world since the Golden Renaissance in the 15th Century, and even before that? What sets us apart from the rest of the world? What are we fighting against to maintain our existence?"

"The Principle of Universal Love," I interrupted him.

The man burst into laughter again. "The Principle of Universal Love," he repeated mockingly. "That wasn't even on the agenda during the Golden Renaissance. It wasn't more than just a faint idea then, wrapped up so deeply in Christian doctrine that it was barely seen. I believe they tried to bring the sacrament of Agape back during the Renaissance, but only in a superficial and ceremonial sense. Universal love was never seen as a universal principle, and still isn't. Only the people who ran the Venetian Empire at the time of the Renaissance were smart enough to see the potential of this principle for uplifting society. That's why they went out of their way to destroy the Renaissance before this principle would become recognized and be made known. Our Venetian founders unleashed eighty years of religious warfare to destroy the very notion of love down to the innermost core. They did it so that the very notion of universal love as a principle would be lost forever, just like the knowledge had been lost for a millennium that the Earth is a sphere, which had been totally lost during the dark ages. That physical reality that should have been obvious to any thinking person with an open mind, which the Pythagorean had recognized 3000 years ago, was no longer seen. This knowledge had been overlaid with the imperial plate of perceptional insanity. Religion served us well on that score, and it served us well also to bury the Principle of Universal Love before it would be recognized even to some degree by humanity for its profound potential."

"But the Principle of Universal Love came back, didn't it?" I interrupted him. "It came back with the second Renaissance in Europe that gave humanity a new foundation for civilization with the Treaty of Westphalia. That treaty ended your precious eighty years of war. This treaty was built on the Principle of the Advantage of the Other. The Principle of the Advantage of the Other was the first major expression of the Principle of Universal Love. It became the foundation for modern civilization."

"Very good," said Palmerston. "You are right on the mark. Still, you don't know what divides the world today. We have successfully buried the idea of the Principle of the Advantage of the Other. Sure, the Treaty of Westphalia that was built on this principle became the first international constitution, the key for modern international relations. But we buried it. We buried it deep. The idea is dead now, never to rise again. But there is another element of the that principle that you should have mentioned, that reflects the Principle of the Advantage of the Other. You should know what it is, but you don't. So let me give it to you straight. It is the General Welfare Principle. The General Welfare Principle is the most dangerous principle for any empire to overlook. It came right out of the Peace of Westphalia. Germany was built up out of a patchwork of division into a nation by this principle. America made the General Welfare Principle the keystone of its Constitution. Every war that was fought on our behalf from this time on was fought to destroy this principle. You must understand why we create war. Wars aren't fought anymore for territory. Wars are fought to destroy the principle of the general welfare, to destroy the core principle of civilization. We set up wars is such a way that they last for a very long time. We are not interesting in winning wars. We are interested in keeping them smoldering until they have destroyed civilization sufficiently that the General Welfare Principle will never endanger the slavery processes that enable the existence of empires. That is why we created and guided the French Revolution. This single revolution of ours destroyed the Renaissance culture of Europe more deeply than anything else ever had. After the French Revolution Napoleon was fighting our wars on an even wider platform, without even being aware that he did this for us. We are so highly successful in this process of staging wars, because the intent for our wars never comes fully to light, nor would anyone believe us if we told them."

"People will believe me, and I will tell them," I interrupted him.

"Don't me laugh again," he replied. "People won't believe you, because it is unbelievable what you would tell. We have already destroyed China and India, did you know that?"

"China and India haven't been destroyed," I countered him. "What are you talking about? China and India are on track of becoming each an economic superpower."

The man just laughed again. "Your answer proves that you know nothing. We destroyed the potential for them to become an economic power. We destroyed it in both countries. Asia has one fundamental problem, and China has almost recognized that problem and might have fixed it had we not turned their ship around. The Achilles Heel of Asia is that it doesn't understand the power of the General Welfare Principle. Their destruction is assured by this single fundamental weakness. We inspired China and India to become a slavery power for America and Western Europe. In this way we hit all bases at once. China produces goods with a slave labor policy, and sells their product below the cost of production. China can sell its products to you cheaply, because it doesn't have to pay for the social and physical infrastructures that are necessary for maintaining a population. China is simply using its people up. It is grinding them into the dust on our command. China thereby prevents its own economic development even though it desperately needs this development to deal with its massive poverty. More than 70% of the people of China and India live in absolute poverty. China and India aren't on the way of becoming an economic superpower at all. They are on the fast track of becoming a super-disaster on an unimaginable scale that has the potential of taking the entire world down into a New Dark Age. That's how highly successful we have become in Asia, and you didn't even recognize it. And with Asia as our secret weapon, we are on the fast track of destroying America and Western Europe. From the moment on that America has trashed its constitution at our bidding, and turned its back onto the General Welfare Principle, America was doomed, and Western Europe, which follows America, was doomed with it. With the General Welfare Principle relegated to the ash can of history, America became the importer of slave-labor products. No one in America can compete with slave-labor products, because the pricing structure in America includes the cost of maintaining the social and physical infrastructures that are necessary for maintaining a productive society. With the importation of slave-labor products, which became possible once the General Welfare Principle was scrapped, we assured the destruction of America's industries, and the industries of Western Europe. We are on the fast track of getting America and Western Europe Asianized, which when it is complete, ends civilization."

"That will never happen!" I interrupted the man.

"You may be right," he conceded. "The whole system will likely collapse before this happens. That's what we ultimately want. Then we will simply mop up the pieces. That is how we will own the whole world."

"You are crazy!" I interjected.

The man shook his head. "Just consider this," he said. "Imagine that America becomes destroyed economically to the point that next to nothing remains standing of its once proud industries. Imagine that the dollar also collapses so that America has nothing left of value so that it is forced to stop importing slave-labor products from India and China, and other slave-labor nations. This means that suddenly most of China's economic structures, and India's too, which are largely geared to producing slave-labor products, will shut down. The word chaos is too mild a term to describe the outcome when this happens. What we are setting up is staged to become a global super-catastrophe. That's what I meant by us overlaying ancient tectonic plates."

"No, it won't come to that. We will intervene!" I said to him. "We will cause America and Europe to wake up!"

"Wake up!" Palmerston repeated. "Sure, America will wake up all right when it finds that everything is disintegrating that it requires for its physical existence. By then, however, it will be too late for anyone to recover what has been destroyed. The rich, whom we presently utilize for this destruction, will suddenly find out that they are as poor as the beggars on the street corners. But it will be too late by then."

"It won't come to that. We will intervene!" I repeated.

"Sure you will try. In fact, I expect you to try. But you won't be successful," said Palmerston and laughed some more. "You won't be successful, because we have this long standing policy to pepper the world with more and more wars to shift the attention away from the physical reality of the disintegrating world, which of course will also help the process of global destruction along. Naturally, those wars might progress into becoming nuclear wars. We will start small at first, with mini-nukes or with small cruise missiles, and then gradually step up into bigger things. With the General Welfare Principle defeated globally, which we are getting close to, we can do anything we want, and we will. I am offering you a chance to be on the winning side. In return we want you to help us to make the process for our victory as smooth as possible, so that not too many wars will be needed. Wars tend to be a bit messy. We want to avoid them. I believe that this is your goal likewise. So I am giving you an opportunity to make your hopes come true. Maybe we can do it completely without war. There is a lot one can do with subversion and terror operations. I am offering you a symbiotic relationship," he said and laughed again.

While Palmerston spoke another man joined us on the bench, with two more men standing behind us. The three men appeared like a shadow out of the dark. The man who sat down next to me introduced himself as Antonio.

"What do you want from me," I said to them all.

"You have caused a great deal of damage," said Antonio harshly. "We expect you to make good."

"Damage to what?"

"To our operation," said Antonio. "The cruise missile that you brought down carried a low yield nuclear warhead. You have caused the plan to fail. You must make up for it. Our people had the region's air defense system disabled. The missile should not have been detected. And had it been detected, no one should have been able to interfere. And if for any reason it should have been reported, there should have been such a long-delayed reaction that the plan would have proceed right to its final end before an intervention would have taken place. But you spoiled that outcome at every step along the way. You bypassed the chain of command and went right to the people who control things on the front line who are not a part of our team."

"The project that you killed was intended to be a provocation to draw the USA into a thermonuclear confrontation with the Soviets on a massive scale that would have ripped America apart," said Palmerston, "but you have turned it into a peace offering. We need resourceful people like you on our side. We don't want you to be working against us when we try this again."

"What do you mean by saying, when you try this again? You're going to do this all over? Are you saying that you're going to keep at it until the Pentagon is destroyed? Is that what you're saying?

"Maybe," Antonio answered. "Or maybe we go for something better, something that really strikes terror in the hearts of America. When people are terrified enough, they'll do anything. But it will likely be the Pentagon."

"Why not Capital Hill? Why not take out the government altogether?"

"Surely you must know why we wouldn't do that," said Antonio calmly. "If you can't see that, maybe you aren't as intelligent as we think you are. In that case, maybe we should kill you right here. So tell me, why wouldn't we hit Capital Hill? Make your answer good. Your life may depend on it."

"You say, this wasn't meant to be an attack, but a provocation," I said calmly. "In this case you need our government alive to respond to your provocation in the way you want them to respond. In other words, you need your stooges on Capital Hill that you have spent years to set up. So why would you want to blow them out of the water? That's probably the only reason why Washington DC still stands, and why it will never be hit with a big nuclear bomb. That also means that all the mumbo jumbo that you just gave me is a lie."

Antonio and Palmerston looked at each other in silence and nodded.

"You don't really want to blow up Washington, not even the Pentagon," I added after moments of silence. "You need those people to fight your dirty wars for you. You need them, just like you say you need me to help you. Isn't that so? And for the government to be able to do what you want them to do, you must provide a provocation. Anything big will do. That's why you also own the press and the entertainment media in our country, to get the public hyped up. You need the press and the TV networks to whip up hatred and hysteria against some imagined enemy in order that your provocation will be bearing the desired fruit. For this you wouldn't really need to hit the Pentagon, unless you're aiming to stage a nuclear end game, for which the Pentagon isn't needed or ever will be needed again. The Pentagon isn't a part of the nuclear war machine that you are aiming to use. It becomes expendable when you are aiming to bully America into nuclear war scenarios that have so far been resisted. The nuclear war games are controlled out of Omaha and the White House, and possibly also out of some NORAD locations with command capabilities. One single word from the White House or any one of those other locations and the world will be set on fire at your will. I am certain that you hadn't something like that in mind."

"Not just yet," interrupted Palmerston. "The coming watchword will be preemption, nuclear preemption. When this happens watch out!"

"That's why you didn't really want to blow up Washington or only the Pentagon just yet," I cut him off. "Your aim was terrorism. Destroying a small city with your nuclear cruise missile would have served your real purpose far better. Isn't that so? Maybe you were aiming at Baltimore that has no strategic value. Your cruise missile getting unhindered past Washington would have multiplied America's perceived vulnerability. Psychological warfare is your real game, isn't it? With it, you can disable a nation overnight and turn it into a compliant vegetable that will do anything you ask."

Palmerston nodded again and smiled.

"I just wanted to have this part confirmed by you," I said to him. "That is the reason why I brought up the Capital Hill as a target for you to comment on, just to get your reaction."

"You have passed the test," said Antonio as calmly as I had spoken to him. "You should realize something, and this is the reason why you will want to work with us, that the sooner we are in total control of the world, the sooner will the world become free of war. Except, we can't do this alone. We must have help from reliable people on the inside. As you know, nuclear war is a delicate and dangerous game. One slip-up could end civilization. As I think I know you, I mean as a person, you'd give your life for the chance to prevent a major holocaust. I am offering you this chance, and I'm asking much less in return."

"You didn't say this correctly," I interrupted Antonio. "You are telling me that you can't break a great industrious and compassionate nation like ours, unless we do the destruction ourselves from within. You can only achieve your goal with a lot of help from rogue elements in high places, so that our own people destroy our nation. Divide from within, and conquer, right? That's the game, isn't it?"

"You are perceptive," Antonio smiled. "That's how things are done in the empire. We devise the plans...." He started to laugh in mid sentence. "You have the best professionals in the business. That's why we need help from you to get our plans to work. That's why we own most of the rogue elements of your government's covert strategic operations divisions, and top level people in the CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department. Without America's help, we wouldn't stand a chance, but that's not a problem since we own all the relevant people. We get all the help that we want. We can do anything, just like we will get your help on the diplomatic front when that becomes necessary."

"No, no, I won't be a traitor against my own country as you want me to be," I answered in protest.

I almost forgot that the two men were still standing behind us.

"I won't do it, even if you threaten to kill me right now," I said to Palmerston. "I won't help you to provoke my own country into destroying the world for you."

Antonio shook his head and smiled. "I expected that reaction. This means that we can trust you. So, don't worry, we won't kill you right now. Some day you will understand why. I can say this with certainty. I can say this because of what you have already been quiet about. You didn't scream at me out of disgust over the million people that would have been killed had Baltimore been hit. Why didn't you even mention the million victims? You think in higher terms, don't you?"

I had to delay my answer. I noticed a gondolier gliding towards us, singing in the dark to his customer, a $50/hr entertainment extravaganza. The people in the gondola were probably all too busy with each other to take any notice of us. Still, their passing in front of us gave me time to formulate a 'safe' answer that the fondi might accept.

"Why should I protest?" I said to Antonio after the gondola was out of the rage of our voices. "I know how you people think," I said to him. "I am aware of what your objectives are. Had I brought the subject up, you would have said to me that a million lives don't matter since you presume that the Earth is overpopulated by two to four billion people, which you aim to get rid off. You would have probably told me that once this stage in perception is reached, what does it matter then if an operation incurs the death of a million people, or then million people, or even fifty million people. Against the already widely accepted 'need' for depopulation the actual mass killing of human beings becomes irrelevant then, even at the level of the largest large-scale genocide that one can imagine. The numbers become irrelevant once the axioms are accepted. Since I know all this already, and you know that I do, what point is there in making a fuss over it? If I saw any chance that I would be able to change your mind and keep you from playing those games, I would have argued. But there is no chance for that to happen, is there?"

"You are right," said Antonio. "The goal is the only thing that's relevant. Love is irrelevant. Love stands in the way of the goal. People's lives are irrelevant. If you look at the world in the high minded fashion that you should cultivate, that you are capable of cultivating, you wouldn't allow yourself the luxury of becoming encumbered with love. It's irrelevant. Once you realize that, you will become effective, even ruthless."

Palmerston intervened at this point. He spoke calmly and softly. "If I were you," he said, "I would forget about all the patriotic stuff that you had mentioned a few moments ago, like wanting to protect your country. Patriotism has become an invalid concept along with a whole lot of other invalid concepts. Your wonderful republic called the USA, which you want to protect, doesn't really exist anymore. That's what I meant when I said that the tectonic plates are shifting. The USA has been overlaid by the plate of the empire just as Britain had been overlaid by the Venetian Empire, out of which the so-called British Empire was born."

He bent down and touched the ground. "It all started here," he said solemnly. "It started many centuries ago. The plates were shifting even then."

"Are you the British Empire, then?" I asked, cautiously.

"The British Empire!" he repeated and laughed. "That doesn't exist anymore either. That term hasn't been valid for a long time. Just like corporations disappear in mergers and their names fade into oblivion, the British Empire has vanished. The Venetian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Austro Hungarian Empire, they've all been overlaid, and yet they're still alive in a fashion. The plates are shifting all the time, names change, alliances change. The real empire, our empire, really has no name. We've given up on that. It's less confusing that way. You can call us anything you want, and you'll be probably correct. Call us The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets, and you'll be right about that too. Call us the Empire without a Name. Then nobody can challenge you with preconceptions. However, let me assure you that I don't mean this physically or geographically. I am speaking mostly metaphorically when I say that on our empire the sun never sets."

He reached for another piece of chocolate and offered me one. "A new era has begun," he continued. "History as you know it has come to an end. In the past empires would fight against empires. This was wasteful. Then the Renaissance happened and tried to shut down the empires. We dealt with that too. All of that will soon be over and be forgotten. There will be only one empire remaining. That's us, the final World-Empire. Of course we wouldn't call it that. Nobody likes the word, empire! It's an archaic term. We call it presently by a descriptive term. We call it globalization. People like their truth obscured. The term, United Global Government, sounds so much better than World-Empire. United, has a ring of democracy to it. Of course the word, democracy, doesn't mean anymore either, what it used to mean. We changed the meaning of it. The term, democracy, now stands for imperialism. Don't you agree, the substitution really softens the image of imperial control? That's what the word, democracy, now represents in real terms in the modern world. It means the hidden rule of empire. That is why we are fighting to democratize the whole world.

"Another concept that doesn't exist anymore is that of the sovereign nation-state," Palmerston continued. "The world has changed. The old concepts of communist states, capitalist states, north, south, east, or west, have all become irrelevant. There are only three types of states in the world, Peter. Your name is Peter, isn't it? There are the 'core states,' and the 'grunt states,' and the 'failed states.'

"The core states are the ones which we already own. In historic terms they represent Rome. We give them circuses, festivals, ideology, stature, a certain amount of power, and we even give them the programs for the circuses. We also give them our money, our global control, our judges, bankers, and governors. They've become an extension of us. For this we've taken away their industries, their culture, science, education, even their identity as human beings, and given them insanity. On this platform they'll never be a threat to us. Without them having a 'mind' of their own, they need us. They are the model states for the New World.

"The grunt states, in turn, are those that we own implicitly, either through debt-intimidation, or threats, or free-trade slavery. They are an essential component of our empire. Since the core states are not allowed to engage in any form of vibrant economic development and industrialization, for which they would become a threat to the Empire, the grunt states will be forced to supply their needs. It's done on a slavery basis. This world-slavery process will of course keep both these types of states nicely mired in poverty. Thus, neither will ever pose a threat to us, the Empire.

"The third category are the 'failed states.' We call them that, not because they failed to serve their population. That's not an important criterion. We call them the failed states, because they have failed to become useful to the empire. They have failed to become core states or grunt states. We first encourage them to upgrade themselves. If that doesn't help we'll create the kind of conditions for them under which they simply fizz out and vanish from sight. We need to do this to them, so that they won't use up our natural resources to develop themselves."

"You mean them utilizing THEIR natural resources," I interrupted Palmerston.

"No Peter, I said this correctly. They would be using up OUR natural resources. All the world's resources belong to us. That's what globalization means. There is only one empire in the world, one I, one Us, one global ownership of resources. Globalization means that the whole world is in the same boat together, which is our boat. We own everything. Their resources are OUR resources. That's not an easy thing for someone new, like yourself, to understand."

He looked at me and grinned. "Even the concept of you joining us is ultimately invalid. You are a part of the world, and we are it. You are a part of us. The only choice you have left is to decide in which category you want to be in. Do you want to be in the core category, the grunt category, or the failed category. Much of Africa is in the failed category."

He stopped and laughed. "Do you remember the movie, Ben Hur?" he asked. "If you do, you may remember the scene of the naval battle and the captain addressing the crew of slaves that were rowing a war ship. Do you remember that scene?"

I said that I did. I told him that the captain had said to the crew of slaves, "We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well and live."

"That's what we are saying to everybody. Serve the empire and you will live," said Palmerston. "Serve the ship. Row well. We will make an example of those who fail. We will cause them to fizz out. And that applies to you too. There is no such thing as living outside of the Empire. There is only a question, a question of alignment, for you to consider. I am offering you a chance to join the core category. That's the alignment that I recommend."

I didn't answer. I merely nodded. Then I shook my head. "I'll never join," I said emphatically.

"This means that you choose to join the failed group," said Palmerston calmly. "If I were you, I would reconsider this decision. As a matter of fact I recommend that your entire country, the mighty USA reconsider its position. I have heard many arguments that America should be considered a failed state. It fails to integrate itself, as it should. In some respects it is enthusiastically with us, and in another respect it continues to remain a nasty threat to the Empire."

"America has never been an imperial state," I said to Palmerston.

"That's where its difficulties are located, Peter. Sure, America has fielded great patriots that tried to steer it in the right direction, towards us. You have heard of the Southern Strategy, haven't you? These people got rid of some of the biggest obstacles against America becoming one of the core states. They assassinated some of the biggest names in America, including Presidents, people that acted as traitors against the Empire, people like Hamilton, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, the Kennedy brothers. The trouble with America is that the ghost of these traitors keeps coming back as a mortal threat to us."

"Are you surprised?" I asked. "Just look at Franklin Roosevelt. He took the junk heap that America was back in the depression of the thirties, and turned it into the most prosperous, most powerful, and most beloved and admired country in the world. It took him only twelve years to do this, and it was done without threats, without violence, on the platform of Love-Based Economics. The American people loved him for this, and still do."

"That's the problem, Peter. The ghost of these peoples simply wont go away. Especially the ghost of Franklin Roosevelt keeps coming back, together with his famous threat to eradicate the Empire totally in the postwar period."

"Are you suggesting that the USA will therefore fail to become a real asset for the Empire?" I asked. "Are you going to list it as a failed state?"

Palmerston nodded. "I am afraid that the USA will forever fail to be a real asset for the Empire. I am afraid of the consequences for America, of it becoming regarded as a failed state. If it remains a liability for us, which we cannot allow, it becomes a failed state. Of course, you know what happens to failed states."

"Nuclear war," I said.

"No Peter, that's too messy. Do you remember reading some years ago about the horrible things some filthy rich of the Arabian oil patch used to do to the pretty girls they played around with? After they used them up, that means they played with them for a few days until they got tired of them, they killed them and discarded them in the dessert. The dessert is forgiving."

"You're disgusting," I said.

"We may deal with the USA in the same manner some day," sad Palmerston. "Property is an imperial thing. Whether you like it or not, America is property to the empire, for us to do with as we must. In every form of empire, be it ruled by a King, a Priest, a Cesar, a Czar, an Emperor, or Kaiser, the relationship is always the same. Society is always the property of the Sovereign. That now includes nations. Your own Southern slavocracy in America understood this interrelationship. They altered the Preamble of the Constitution to reflect it. They removed 'happiness' and inserted 'property' as a universal right. The right to own slaves as property is the mark of the core group in an empire."

"You mean like America presently owns India and China as slaves?" I interrupted Palmerston.

Palmerston nodded and then shook his head. "We give America this chance to a slave-owner so that it can destroy itself with it," said Palmerston. "A slave owner nation invariably destroys itself. That's the ugly truth, Of course, if you were on our team, you might alter the outcome and shift America away from being a failed state. As a member of the team you have some power to influence the direction of the world. Wouldn't it be better to be active in this regard, than being a passive spectator or even a victim? You might possibly even help China to upgrade itself to becoming one of the core states of the empire, that would prevent many future wars, and you know how messy wars can get. So what do you think? Remember that every human being on the planet feels the effect of our existence as an empire. Most people, though, don't know where the force comes from that bears down on them. And they will never know. They may see us as the most noble of all the imperials that ever walked the Earth, and they'll probably be right about that too. And they may see you the same way. It might interest you that we have every monarch on the planet at our call, and presidents and princes too, to serve us as we require. I would say, who are you compared to them? Indeed, you should ask yourself that question. And you will. That is why I can tell you with absolute certainty that you won't win against us, should you ever be foolish enough to try and put yourself into the 'failed' group. You can't fight the whole world, certainly not us. So why not join us? Why not make it easy in yourself and join the core group and change the world?"

Then he laughed again. "In a sense, you are in our employ already. As I said, the American republic that you dream about, no longer exists, and hasn't existed for quite some time. There is no republic on the American shores, only the extension of us, of the Fondi Empire. America is owned by us, a hired servant, nicely obedient with a keen understanding of the meaning of duty."

"Except for the ghost of Roosevelt that keeps coming back," I interrupted him. "That's how you know that you really don't own anything."

Palmerston laughed again. "The American dream was so short and so long ago that it doesn't amount to much anymore. It was easy to overlay this naive country of yours with our empire's plate, because you never really left the Empire in the first place. I'm sure you are familiar with the name Adam Smith. The man is adored in America as though he was one of your own. You were colonial underlings before you called yourself independent, and you still act like colonial underlings to the present day, as if you had no mind of your own. Your whole country is like that and has been like that for a long time. Only the nameplate has been changed, from Lincoln to Smith. It's like they say, 'Once a slave, always a slave.' The little Lincoln interlude id long forgotten. Didn't Aristotle say something like that about natural slavery? In any case, it's true, and you're the living testament of it."

"No, it's not true!" I replied. "The fact that there was that great European Renaissance, and that America was built on the foundation of that Renaissance, proves that what you say isn't true. If what you say were true, the ghost of Roosevelt wouldn't be a problem, but it is your worst nightmare. Your Roosevelt ghost is similar to the Christ idea that the Roman Empire tried to destroy. That's where Rome failed. They had no means to destroy the Christ Principle. They killed the man, but they couldn't kill the divinity of man that Christ Jesus represented. They scourged the man. They slandered his ideal. They railed at him and nailed him to the cross. But the Christ idea kept coming back. It is an idea that bestows an incredible dignity on humanity. It raises the image of man and makes it the image of God. Rome couldn't deal with that. They rounded up all the Christians and fed them to the lions in grand public spectacles of gore, in their great circuses, hoping to tear the divine image of man to shreds. But like the ghost of Roosevelt, the Christ idea kept coming back. They couldn't stomp it out, because there was a truth behind it, a universal principle. You talk about globalization, just look at the Christ idea, that was the first real case of globalization, a natural globalization, the globalization of a profound idea of good. You have hijacked the term and given it a bad name."

"The world has changed my friend. The meaning of many words has changed. Globalization is here to stay on our terms. We'll make sure of that," said Palmerston.

"Oh, I love the concept of globalization," I almost shouted. "The globalization of good, rather than the globalization of empires, is the most natural process in the universe. The globalization of good is the rising of the sun. I love the globalization of good. It is a lateral unfolding of good that elevates civilization. Nothing can hold back this humanist globalization. But this unstoppable natural process doesn't include the globalization of imperial control over humanity. Imperial globalism is only possible on a vertical basis of top down imposition, which must constantly be enforced with war. That vertical globalism stands in total contrast to the lateral globalization of good, which happens naturally and inevitably. The Renaissance globalization had spread like wildfire throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th Century. It didn't need to be forced. It was the same earlier in the 14th and 15th Century with what became the Golden Renaissance. An idea was developed that all by itself, by its own uplifting power, uplifted the whole continent. The principle of good is its own imperative. That's the globalism that I like. It spreads laterally across the land like the gentle winds in springtime."

The man laughed again. "The Venetian Empire destroyed the Renaissance," the man replied. "Didn't you study history, or don't they teach this in America anymore? The Venetians divided Europe and put everyone against each other. That's how they created eighty years of religious war in Europe. The war destroyed Europe. The Renaissance was destroyed quietly in the background of it."

"But the Renaissance came back," I replied. "The spirit of the Renaissance, the recognition of the humanity of the human being, has never been wiped out. It always came back. Out of it came the Peace of Westphalia that ended the imperial wars and opened the door to the founding of the United States of America later on. The renaissance pioneers wanted to create a model nation-state republic in America, which would have been impossible in Europe where the imperial monsters kept coming back. The imperials, which the Treaty of Westphalia didn't defeat, were fighting the renaissance ideal with all their might in order to maintain their illegitimate empires. You are quite right that it was the British Empire that created the French Revolution in order to wipe out the French intellectual elite and to kill the European Renaissance. The same imperial rage guided Napoleon who the spread the intellectual devastation across Europe with his endless seeming string of wars. The British/Ventian imperials exploded into this bloody rage, because they hadn't been able to defeat the New American Republic. They were afraid of the renaissance spirit. They were afraid of the humanist ideals that America upheld for all mankind."

The man just laughed. "How long did any of that precious American spirit last? Did you ask yourself this? We've overlaid America with our imperial plate so easily. We brought America to its knees. As you may recall from your history lessons, in the 1930s America was almost dead. The great pearl was crushed."

Now I had to laugh. "Franklin Roosevelt inspired this dead country to rouse itself and become the most powerful military and economic force in the world," I said to him, still laughing. "We became the envy of the world, didn't we? If Roosevelt hadn't died, America would have shut down every empire in the world. He would have given the people their nations back."

The man simply smiled. "You really don't know anything about geopolitics," he said to me and began laugh again. "You just proved my point. You are all amateurs. We allowed America to recover. That's why it was possible for it to rebuild itself. We allowed this, because we needed America strong to serve our larger objective. I agree that your lateral globalization of good is a natural and powerful process when it is allowed to happen, but the vertical globalization, which you say can only exists when it is forced, is a vastly superior process. That is why the empire is built on vertical domination exclusively. It has become the greatest globalized force in human history, like a Sherman Tank let loose in a city of tents and tarpaper shacks. That's the real face of globalization. Lateral globalization is history. The globalization of good is gone forever. You need to accept that and align yourself with the New World."

"I agree with you on that," I said, "but I hate what I see. I see an empire of the super-rich, a tiny clique, surrounded by a world of slaves. I wouldn't call this a civilization. I would call this the death of humanity. I would call it that, because in your vertical empire nothing works, nothing makes living worthwhile, nothing supports the life of human beings. You've become beastmen. Nevertheless, you found yourself forced to resort to Roosevelt's lateral system of Love-Based Economics when your brutally forced vertical system got you into trouble. You needed America's assistance to bail you out," I replied. "You needed us to shut down your failed Hitler project that had ran out of control."

The man laughed again. "The Hitler project wasn't a failed project. It was a highly successful project, a pilot project for synarchism. Hitler proved that absolute bestiality is the most ideal weapon to destroy a highly cultured and moral society to the point that it will not object to the most insane wars, genocide, and absolute destruction. Hitler was a pilot project for the coming depopulation. You have to accept that. Depopulation is necessary for the Empire to exist. Your are right on that. Hitler was our little lab-rat so to speak. America didn't really interfere in any fundamental way. It spiced the game at first, and then it shut it down for us when the game had run its course far enough. Our original idea was that we would bring Hitler on line with us and get him to help us destroy America, but Hitler was stubborn. He didn't want a back-seat role. So we let him play the game his way. Actually it worked out better this way, because we had also something else planned for America. We needed America to build the atomic bomb for us. Hadn't H. G. Wells spelled out the policy for our nuclear terror project perfectly and clearly? We needed the bomb as a terror weapon with which to force the world to submit itself to our global empire. We also needed America to demonstrate the bomb for us, and then take the blame for us in the end. America became our second Hitler, slightly more advanced perhaps, and more daring, and a lot more brutal as Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrate. None of these projects were unfortunate mistakes, as humanity calls them now. They were deliberate, and they worked exceedingly well for us and fully met their design criteria.

"After its duty was done America became less important to us," he continued, "except for the small experiment that you call the Cold War. This too, is working out well for us, don't you agree? We never thought we would be able to convince America and Russia to built 65,000 nuclear bombs at our bidding. I guess we had made them more insane than we thought would be possible. In any case, America responded well. It also became useful to us as a source for looting, and to assist us in looting the world. We have a kind of special relationship with America, like with a puppy dog on a leash. We even accomplished the goal that we had originally intended. The goal was to destroy America. For this goal we nearly got Hitler on board. Hitler had the same goal. However, Hitler wouldn't have been nearly as successful with his bombs in destroying America than we were after the war with our ideological project that we called, deindustrialization to create the post-industrial era. America did the destruction of its industries all by itself. They did it for us, obediently, bit by bit. In fact, they wouldn't let anybody stop them. America has become the most perfect puppy dog on a string. The Americans dynamited their own steel industry and a lot of other vital industries as well. No amount of bombing that Hitler could have unleashed would have come anywhere close to being as destructive as America has been itself at our bidding. They called all the people that objected to the destruction, traitors. Do you really think, Peter, that you can overturn all of that now deeply rooted mentality where 'profit' dictates everything?"

The man, Antonio, looked around as if to assure himself that no one would hear him. "The bestiality of the Vietnam War was another of our highly successful projects along that line," he said in a quiet tone. "That war has inflicted the same kind of moral and cultural damage onto the American society that Hitler had inflicted on the German society. The Vietnam War was the crucial turning point for America, a kind of point of no return. After that war our project to destroy America was put on autopilot. We shut down America's economy, industry after industry. We shut down education, we debased culture, and most of all we turned politics in America into a joke. When you own the media and entertainment circus, it's easy to turn an entire society against itself. America is now at the point that its society is now electing Presidents that would have made high school dropouts seem intelligent in comparison, a few decades ago. These new Presidents have all been carefully bred by us to become perfect puppy dogs that love to be kept on our leash. That's why we want you on our side. We want all the really intelligent people that are still left on our side. We want to make this controlling game work smoothly. Puppy dogs are easy to come by, but not so really intelligent people that can guide the leash."

"Even if I were to join you," I said, "you can't win against the United States. You may be able to capture the whole world, but not the United States. At some point along the way there will be another Roosevelt or Lincoln coming along, and you will loose. So, why should I join the loosing side? Isn't that an intelligent question."

"Who is saying that we want to win the United States over?" said the man and smiled. "Winning isn't in our vocabulary; it never has been. It may be in your vocabulary, but it isn't in ours. We are not in a contest with America that we would want to win. We have already overlaid America with our plate. We own America. We own it lock, stock, and barrel. We own the electoral process. We own the political parties. We own the candidates. Why do you think the American people hadn't have any real choices put before them at any Election Day in recent times? We gave them our choices, so that whichever way they would chose, they would be voting for us. Isn't democracy a wonderful thing when you own the process? Nor will there ever be another Lincoln or Roosevelt on the political horizon. If such a man would be naive enough to dare to stand up, he would be instantly slandered by us and be so badly ridiculed that he would be maligned and trashed by his own people. That's more effective than assassination, Peter. Just look at your friend Lyndon LaRouche, Peter. LaRouche is a brilliant man. He may have saved the world from a nuclear war with his personal intervention, but we dragged him into jail for it. That was a mistake on our part. It made him a martyr all around the world. Now we are contemplating to have him be released. But before he'll see the daylight we'll have his face dragged through the mud. That mud-campaign process works wonders, Peter. All of America will soon despised him. The Democratic Party, the party of Franklin Roosevelt, will bar its doors to him, even though he represents Roosevelt's policies to the fullest possible degree extended forward into the modern age. Our smear campaigns have always worked. Our finely tuned character-assassination campaigns are so successful that your own press in America would call Abraham Lincoln a crackpot today, and Roosevelt an anti-Semitic nut case. Those great historic heroes wouldn't dare to stand for election today against us. You can be sure the public would be blabbering today, voraciously, all the insults that we would put into their mouth against these people. We might even invent sex scandals. It is laughingly easy to get the public on ones side to support the very thing that will destroy it. All you need to do is to own the media. With a few psychological tricks the media owns the consciousness of society as its private playground. In fact we do this so well today that Hitler's famous propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, would envy us for our success if he was still alive."

I just shook my head in utter disbelief.

"The point is, we own America," the man Antonio repeated, keeping up the momentum. "We are keeping America alive for now 'to serve the ship' and redeem itself from its failed-state status. The only question that you should ask yourself is, for how long we might be patient? You might be able to help us with that. Right now, the jury is still out on that. America is still a bit of an asset for us in terms of what it represents in the world. We are not quite sure when exactly we are going to play our America card for the last time. Our biggest problem, though, is China, as you may know. Breaking down China is not that easy. America may be useful to us in that process."

"That will never happen," I replied. "America will never attack China."

The man laughed again. Palmerston laughed likewise and took over. "You are really funny," said Palmerston, "did you know that? You should be a comedian. Who has said here anything about attacking China? We don't want to destroy China. We want to soften it up so that we can overlay it. America may some day become useful to us to soften up China. I think when the time is right we may play our America card in a really big way, but not in a war. We will use America up to advance our purpose. America will oblige us with that. We had urged the Americans a long time ago to develop the physical resources that will be needed. America complied. America now has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The actual self-destruction of America can likewise be arranged. We'll simply get America to do it to itself, from within. That's not hard to do when one owns the county as we already do in all the important areas. Your people will comply, you'll see. They will comply just as they always have in the past. They haven't failed us one single time. I can also assure you that the resulting bestiality in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of America from within will soften up China for sure, just as we desire. Except, we won't play this card just yet. We have some other uses for America first. Our banker boys from the Cashi Illuminati tell us that the global financial system is coming down. It will be bankrupt in a few years. Since our empire depends on them, we'll get America to rearrange the world for them in such a way that they can keep their looting operations going forever thereafter."

"Hell will freeze over before this happens," I protested. "America won't do this for you. In fact this can't be done. No American government would survive more a day with this treachery on its agenda. Our President would be impeached; the elected officials would be forced to resign. We have safeguards against this sort of thing in our system. Besides, no party would ever be elected again if it did a thing like that."

The man just laughed. "Who said anything about an elected government? Did Hitler carry out his thing with an elected government? Elected governments will soon be history. Hitler gave us a dry run of how this is done. America has been chosen to be the next target for fascist takeover. That's what I mean when I refer to our tectonic plate overlaying all the other plates that are still called nations."

I just shook my head. "You're insane," I said to him.

Palmerston just smiled. "No we are not insane. We are efficient. We may not be truthful in what we say, but we are efficient. You'll see and remember what I said here tonight, when it comes to pass. It's so easily done. You'll be astounded as how easy it really is to subjugate a country and destroy it if we so desire. We already own the electoral system in America. We'll pick the dumbest person we can find with a high pedigree, one that we can wrap around our finger. We'll get him elected, and behind him follow our boys into the White House. Once they're in there, they'll never leave. We'll set up a big terrorist operation and create a police state in the wake of it. In the name of national security we get them to establish a network of secure and undisclosed locations for relocating the government to, ostensibly in case of an emergency. The slightest scare will trigger the relocation. Then we simply blow up Washington. Good bye Washington DC; good bye elected government; and good bye the Old World. History ends. A new era begins. It begins with preemptive nuclear-war threats, and plain old simple nuclear blackmail. Remember H. G. Wells? He set up the pattern for owning the world. Of course, America will eventually be sacrificed. Historically, America has always been too much of a liability for us. Nor will we need it any longer when we own the world. America will most likely be wiped out with its own missiles. We'll call it a terrorist attack when this happens. The world would believe us even if we did this right now. They have become accustomed to our lies. A terrorist act on the continental scale would terrorize the rest of humanity out of their minds. They would surrender to us for sure, unless we were to get them to surrender to us sooner."

Palmerston turned to Antonio. "That's really the most efficient way to do this, isn't it?" He said this in a matter-of-fact-type of speaking.

"That's why the empire has no military forces," he said to me. "We don't need them. It's a lot more efficient to get other people to destroy themselves at our bidding. They'll do it all for free and at their own initiative. Some do it for religion, others for honor or money, or for the taste of power. Some do it for ideology, or even for freedom. It's all been done before. That's how World War I was started and many other wars. Small-minded people are easily used. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and if we play our cards to their liking, so it seems to them. Some people actually come to us on their own accord and offer their services. That's how we'll play with America in the future, in general terms. We'll use America up like one of these cards, just as we had used up Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a similar purpose, or as we used up the Vietnamese people later for the same thing."

"That is sick!" I protested.

"That's the real world," said Palmerston. "That is why I keep telling you, you are all amateurs. You don't understand anything that lies beneath the surface. The Vietnam War, for example, wasn't about Vietnam. The target was America. The target was to destroy America from within. As I said before, that project was highly successful. But you don't realize that, do you? You think it was your war to defend the world against communism. That is what you are telling your children in the history books. You even built this great memorial wall in Washington with every name inscribed on it of the American soldiers that died in Vietnam, over 58,000 names in all. The wall is nearly 500 feet long. Left out, of course, are the wounded. They don't seem to count. There were three times as many wounded. If you had included them, the wall would have had to be 2000 feet long. It's an impressive monument nevertheless, but tragically it doesn't tell the real story because America is dishonest. If America was honest with itself it would have to build twenty-five more such walls to list the names of all the other people that stood and died side by side with the American soldiers, the more than one-and-a-half million Vietnamese who were dying for the same objective. And again that would leave out the wounded. There were 600,000 of the Vietnamese casualties, besides the 2-4 million civilian deaths. The casualty figures are so high because the Vietnam War wasn't meant to be won, nor was it about Vietnam itself. That's now well understood in America in some circles. Our people had never intended that this war should be won. It was designed to grind on relentlessly, to grind the American society into the dust, and to do it on a broad front, economically, culturally, and the destruction of society as human beings. The Vietnam War was designed to rob America of its soul, Peter. Thee process worked well. The several million Vietnamese that died in the process were sacrificial objects that were used up for this purpose, just like the American soldiers in Vietnam were used up for the same purpose, and I mean our purpose."

"Please stop it!" I said. "This is going too far."

"No, it isn't going far enough. You don't remember what Nam was like, do you? What happened in Nam was cultural warfare. Napalm was used for cultural warfare. Nothing is more effective in shock value than for people to watch life human torches paraded on TV in living color, fleeing from their burning huts, collapsing to death with every step in their holocaust that nothing could free them from. Napalm was designed to be unquenchable. It's not easily put out. Bullet holes can be healed. Also they don't show up well on TV. Napalm was different. It was designed to kill America culturally, to kill its humanity. It had no other strategic value."

"Please stop it!" I repeated.

"No I can't," said Palmerston. "How else can I convince you that you are not even in the ballpark when it comes to defeating us. We own all the cards, and you don't even know that those cards exist."

"I know enough," I countered him.

"You know nothing, and what you think you know is wrong."

I raised my hand to stop him.

"OK, if you are so smart, then tell me why torture was used in World War II? Our people made sure that the Geneva Convention was scrapped by Hitler. 'Brutality without mercy' became the official Nazi dictum in dealing with war-prisoners. Why?"

"To get information out of them," I said quietly.

"That's the smallest part of the reason," said the man. "I'll give you a clue. General Paulus brought a quarter million German soldiers against Stalingrad. Half of them were killed in battle. When Paulus became surrounded by Russian troops and then surrendered, nearly a hundred thousand prisoners were taken. Only six thousand made it back alive. Just six thousand out of a quarter million. Brutality without mercy exacts a terrible price. And that's how our plan was coming to fruition in World War II almost universally. Germany lost its best men in every category, as we anticipated. Germany never became a challenge to the Empire again. It never really recovered from this shock. But Germany was small in comparison. The USA is too big to be defeated that way. It can only be defeated culturally. Cultural warfare actually has a more potent effect, and it is easily done. It was done in Vietnam with elite special forces. But the recipe was the same: Brutality without mercy! Our operatives took prisoners, gouged their eyes out with spoons or threw them out of helicopters, officially to gain information. But the real target was the American society. America was treated to this horror show in full color on TV and in magazines and 'news' stories. The objective was to tear out America's soul, to wreck its humanity as human beings, and thereby to wreck the USA as a powerful renaissance force that had once dared to challenge the Empire. Vietnam was America's Stalingrad. Nobody can tally the real casualty figures from this war. After few years of this grinding down under intense cultural warfare conditions the once great America that the world knew from the Kennedy era and had adored, the America of space pioneers, of humanitarian pioneers, an economic powerhouse unequalled in the world, the moral giant that the world had looked up to, existed no more.

"Of course if America was honest enough to acknowledge its deep defeat and reflect this in its memorial wall where it lists the casualties of this war," Palmerston continued, "then your people would have had to built another thousand more of such memorial walls in order to inscribe on them the names of all the 'soft' casualties incurred in America from that war. In fact, if you had been even remotely honest with yourself about that war, you would have never used black marble for the memorial wall. You would have cut it out of white marble to indicate that you intended to white wash the whole affair."

The man laughed. "Of course, you couldn't do that, because the American people really didn't know how our people within the American government had arranged this war to be played. Indeed, they may never know. Obviously even you didn't know what this war was all about. So I must repeat what I already said, that you and your friends in government are nothing but a bunch of amateurs when it comes to the big geopolitical games. And with those credentials you come to me and say that you want to defeat us. Don't make me laugh."

"I will make you laugh, because we will defeat you," I answered. "No, not I, or we ourselves, but humanity will defeat you. We will defeat you, because you don't own the game. You didn't create Hitler. You merely financed Hitler into power. You may have also financed the architects of fascism to gain them the artificial esteem that have been given, but you don't own the process. No one owns the process. You kill today and you cause a rift in the fabric of society's humanity and from that point on the process becomes its own master and corrupts you further. The bottom line is, you don't even own yourself. You are riding this avalanche that you have started. You are riding it together with the countless children in the Third World Countries to whom you have handed your guns with which they'll destroy their future. Some of them become masters in their own right. And so, over the years, your empire has created many masters, and masters of masters. What you say that you control is not really under your control at all. Once you start an avalanche in the mountains you are no longer in control of its movement. The avalanche is in control of its own momentum and will take you down with it to rock bottom, just as it took down every empire that ever was. However, once the avalanche reaches the valley floor, its power is spent. The killing stops. The rift in the fabric in society's humanity begins to heal. Rome didn't fall as a victim of competing empires. It fell as a victim of itself. So, why don't you take a shortcut and bypass all the intervening tragedies and join my friends and me in rebuilding humanity. When the avalanche has run its course there will always be peace in the valley again. Peace and humanity are inevitable. The Principle of Universal Love is primary and is forever unfolding. Every war is followed by peace. Peace is inevitable. War is optional. Empire is optional. Both are ultimately suicidal. Only the renaissance of our humanity is life giving. I would suggest that you join us."

Palmerston didn't answer. He paused just long enough to let this shock wear off.

"You don't see the real picture," he said finally. "Your Sunday school fairy tales don't hold water anymore. They are dated. We can do what we aim to do and have done so. It is not a matter of whether we can we do it? It's a matter of choice and timing. And you my good man have a choice to make, too. You should consider that a lot of things may become a bit unpleasant for you when those larger processes begin to unfold that you know we are capable of. They will hit you big time, they will! And they will probably kill you, unless of course you should choose to be on the surviving side, with us."

The man laughed in a cruel and arrogant manner after he said this.

The only thing that I could do in response was to shake my head. I might have cried had I not been so shocked. The entire experience seemed so utterly unreal.

"Why should we be interested in America's survival?" added Palmerston moments later in response to my evident anguish. "America has no resources to crow about. To the contrary, they are pilfering what they use, from the rest of the world. So tell me, why should we let America use up the resources of the world that rightfully belong to us? America has nothing to offer us that would interest us, compared to the resources that are available in China, Russia, the Middle East, and in Africa. As I said, America is a huge liability in that respect. So, can you blame us if we want to turn this liability into an asset to advance our goal? That's basic economics, is it not? Every American can understand this. That's your way of life, isn't it?

"Your only problem is that you're not yet used to think about these things in the larger context," he said moments later. "Once you see the global picture you will realize that the process that I've been talking about is exactly the same as your own that you are already pursuing. It's just bigger; that's all. Name me one American who, if he had a loosing business anywhere in the world and could sell that business for a really steep price, wouldn't jump at the chance and sell it. It's only simple business sense, isn't it? If you can turn a liability into a profit, I am sure that even you would do it. That's really what I'm saying that we are about. Historically, America has been a liability for the fondi. Today it is a useful fool. Tomorrow it may be let go for a profit in a firestorm that advances our objectives. Then it's good bye America. It's nothing more than common business practice to do this. Surely, you can understand such a simple thing."

I stood up. I had had enough of it. I was tempted to just leave this place, this company, and to walk away. "This is getting more and more disgusting," I said to Palmerston, or whatever his real name was. He probably picked the name because it wouldn't be hard to remember. The name had been big in the headlines in the golfing world.

"Sit down," Palmerston demanded. "I know this is all new to you. In fact it must be unbelievable to you, because you aren't accustomed to know the truth. The entire global society has been smothered with lies. We spend a great deal of effort on that, and anyone that questions our lies is immediately branded a conspiracy theorist. Society doesn't like to believe in conspiracies. We made sure of that too. We have convinced everybody that the world is far too simple and transparent to have room for conspiracies. We told everybody that conspiracies are fairy tales. We had no choice in this. If you are as intelligent as I think you are, you will understand that empires aren't build with armies and weapons, but with conspiracies. We conspire to achieve our objective. Naturally, we utilize every resource we can get our hands on to reach our goal. Wouldn't you? The empire has no need for a military power. It never had. We simply induce other nations to fight the wars for us that our goals require to be fought. It is easy to do that. And that is how the fondi operate, as an empire. It is clean, safe, and effective. That's the nature of conspiracies. Venice invented the process. How else could a tiny water-bound city-state rule all of Europe and beyond? Venice did what Rome with all its might had failed to do. It was all done cleanly, with conspiracies."

He looked at me to observe my reaction. "The empires have done this for many hundreds of years, Peter, all the way back to the time when the Venetian Empire destroyed the Renaissance. Conspiracies aren't theory, my friend. They are the stuff that empires are made of. Every tycoon who runs a commercial empire knows that. It works! You just proved to yourself that we are highly effective in that, because you wouldn't believe a word of what I told you, though I told you the truth. Conspiracies are not designed to be transparent. This is one of the hardest things for you new people to recognize. Conspiracies are covered up with professionally crafted lies that nobody can see through, behind which we can change the world to our liking. It's as easy as that, and virtually impossible for anyone to defeat."

I sat down as requested, but with a sigh, as if in protest. "If you are telling the truth," I said to the man, "then I have news for you. You won't get away with what you are planning."

"Who is going to stop us?" said the man and laughed, almost mocking me. "There exists no power in the universe that can stop us; no institution; no government; no religion; no society; nobody; nowhere; certainly not you guys. You might as well face the facts that whoever you think could stop us we already own and utilize for our purposes. So, who do you think would stand against us?"

"We will," I said quietly. "We won't be a part of this."

Palmerston laughed again. "Sure you will," he said in a mocking tone, but with a smile. "You have no idea what games are being played. You don't even know what the cruise missile incidence was all about, and you may never find out."

"I know enough," I said sharply. "I saw what I saw. Washington or Baltimore came within inches of being history."

"You saw nothing, my friend," said Palmerston, still smiling. "Your problem is that you're taking things at face value. You believe what you see. How silly of you! You live in a make-believe world, my friend. You don't see the real world. In the real world, Washington was never in danger. Why do you think we launched the cruise missile right over the top of your monitoring station? We wanted you to bring it down. We knew you could stop it. We know what capabilities you have. Well, almost, we do. We have merely failed to realize that your sensors couldn't detect a cruise missile in the midst of a thunderstorm. There are always some risks involved in any game. In any case, everything turned out as planned."

"You planned this?" I interrupted the man. "This accidental launching wasn't an accident? You launched this thing right over the top of our surveillance station on purpose? I almost suspected something like that, but..."

"There is a lot one can do with remote control," the man interrupted me in mid-sentence. "As you can see, you didn't suspect correctly. The sailors on the boat had nothing to do with that."

He was showing signs of becoming impatient. I could sense it in his voice. "You should take some lessons from a real chess master," he said. "A great master of the game will play several levels of strategy simultaneously. He will play an offensive that draws you out, while the real offensive remains carefully hidden as a game within the game, sometimes several levels deep. I can guarantee you that what you will see on the surface in such a game will never have anything to do with our real intent. That's how a great master plays the game. That's also the way we play our games, multiple levels deep. We rearrange the entire world and shape its course our way, without anyone knowing it, or even reacting to it, because no one can ever tell what the real intent is at the deepest level."

"I am not as dumb as you think that I would believe that," I countered the man. "There is no way that you can be the only player in the world and the master of the game at every level. The world is far too wide for that. There are countless mobs or gangs and underground organization in the world. Some are like little empires. Also there are sovereign governments to contend with, all playing their own games, and some with pretty powerful people at the helm."

The man just laughed again in his typical, irritating, rhythmic manner that he didn't seem to be really aware of. Or was it all part of another game?

"You are right," he said. "We are not the global World-Empire yet, but we are getting close. Nor do we intent to play every game. It's too tedious. But we are the Empire. We do define every game that is being played. And we define the level at which the games are played. The details don't really concern us. We are the undisputed champions in running the games. We define the aspects. If we were to control all the details of the game at every level we would be far too exposed. So we let other people play their game in their own little way, within the parameters that we set out for them, or they themselves set out. For instance, we know how a rook moves, or a castle. We deploy each piece in its own way, as we need it. It's like playing chess. A rook, for example, moves in a certain way. A good player utilizes this characteristic to the best possible advantage. We do the same. We let the rooks move the way they do, and the castles, and so on. We just tell them where to go. Consider them to be our contractors, our chess pieces."

He paused and looked me into the eye. "Your knowledge of history leaves much to be desired," he said. "You obviously don't know what a private empire is and how it was developed. For this you have to think back to 1763, to the Treaty of Paris. That was the point in history when the East India Company in Britain became a private empire, the first private world-empire on the face of the planet. And it was a complete empire. The East India Company owned the central banking system in Britain as one of its far-flung private enterprises. As the company expanded, other nations' private central banks became incorporated into the club, or became attached to it. America became a part of this private club reluctantly. It was dragged into it in 1913 with the founding of the private Federal Reserve central banking system. From this moment on we owned America. We owned its currency and its credit creation, and with it we owned its economy, just as we now own every other nation's economy, with a few exceptions of course.

"The very key to the world-economy is thereby privately owned by us," he said emphatically. "That's what makes us an empire. Our far-flung private ownership of humanity makes almost us a world-empire already. Soon we will be all there is, the one World-Empire, the only one on the planet."

He stood up at this point as if to lecture. "Right from the beginning, from the early days of the East India Company, we owned huge nations. We owned India of course. We owned China for a while. We lost the American colonies for a season, but even when we lost them we largely owned them anyway. When colonialism became a dirty word, we changed the game slightly and gave it a new form. In today's world colonialism is called globalism, as I said earlier. The name has changed, but the slavery remains the same. The empire is easier to run that way, and nobody objects. People really believe that the globalism that we invented is the globalization of good that you referred to earlier. It's the opposite, of course. We also invented the privatization movement. We demanded it as a part of our hidden colonialism, which nobody recognizes as such. When you want to run a private empire, you've got to privatize everything that is of value, and then work through private contractors. The privatization movement enabled us to do this without transparency standing in the way. Conspiracies need to remain private. We now own as private property almost everything that society depends on for its existence.

"In this way we own society," he said and began to smile. "We own almost all of the resources of the world, privately, and most of its food production and distribution. We quite literally own the lives of humanity. We determine who eats and who doesn't, and how much you pay for gasoline at the pump, or for the electricity that lights your light bulb. It's all under our control through our private contractors, our rooks and pawns and castles. We also own most of the news distribution networks in much of the world. We determine what people think. We give the public its opinion. We own the governments to a large degree. We have even begun to get most of the national defense functions privatized, which we now own. We determine how prisoners are treated, and how the soldiers and the veterans are treated, and what kind of medical care they receive, if any. We are the Empire. Nothing much happens in the world that isn't owned and controlled by us."

He paused again as if to search for words. "So you see, it isn't all about money. It's mainly about power. You need power to control the money. For this reason we also create the world's policies," he added, "which are shaped and carried out by our network of secret organizations and some not so secret organizations, even a few that operate right in the open as private policy formulating institutions. The entire conglomerate adds up to a huge network of private clubs. Some people call them our Illuminati. These are large networks of 'agents' that motivate our people and our stooges around the world, and also the public, and do our dirty work. This setup has become a fascinatingly effective. It works somewhat along the line of the European Enlightenment movement of the 1700th. We carried this 'enlightenment' further by financing and shaping its outcome. We didn't coin the term, Illuminati, but it fits. It's a descriptive term that is right to the point. The Empire sets the direction, and the combined network of the Illuminati delivers the finished policies or product as the case may be. I just wonder where your services might fit in best. We have four main groups of Illuminati. One is focused on the financial and economic dimension. Some of us call them the Cashists or the Cashi Illuminati. Another group deals with race and religion. I, personally, like to call this group of our illuminati the Gentle Giant. Another group focuses of terrorism, and the fourth one on environmentalism. So my friend, which one would interest you the most?"

"None," I replied.

"I would chose the Cashists if I were you," he continued. "That is where the money is. They're the ones that make global monetary policy," said Palmerston. "One of the leaders in this group once said, 'I do not care who makes the laws for a nations, as long as I make their currency?' Of course, the goal isn't to get rich. We are already rich. Once you own the world's currency, you don't worry about those little things as getting rich. Your concern is to establish and maintain power over the world. We get the suckers of Joe Public to fight over the crumbs. Their fighting over the crumbs obscures the real game and allows us to loot them better. In the process of it we have created nice poverty. A poor person, or a poor nation, won't likely challenge our power. Of course, poverty is easily created with globalism, free trade, privatization, currency speculation, and above all with financial derivatives gambling where the wagers have grown into the multiple-quadrillion-range. When this bubble comes down the poverty will be so deep that half of humanity will byte the dust. And they will literally byte the dust, because the cartels of our Cashi Illuminati own most of the world's food production and distribution. We determine who eats and who doesn't, unless a person can live of dust. The Cashi Illuminati will certainly have a place for you at their diplomatic front where your services would be useful to us."

He turned to me. "How about it? Would such a career interest you? It offers great opportunities. You'd be dealing with some of our greatest Cashi organizations, like the US Federal Reserve, the IMF, and a host of others. Are you intrigued by the opportunities?"

"Disgusted is a better word," I replied.

"Oh, in this case you might want to deal with softer issues, like the ones that our Gentle Giants Illuminati deal with, which deal with the racial and religious issues?" said Palmerston. "You would have a wide range of backgrounds to choose from that you could interface with as a diplomat. One category is religious fundamentalism, centered on the old-cloth doctrines of church authority and church power, as we saw it during the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusades. That arena also includes non-Christian fundamentalism, like for instance that of the Taliban, which we created. We set the Muslims against the Christian West, and Christians into a rage to kill Muslims, and so forth, and between all of that we have planted the Jewish element as a lubricator to keep the killing machine running.

"We also own the gentler clans of fundamentalists, like the Jesus worshiper. As you may have realized, our goal is to destroy religion, which once gave light to the Renaissance and strength to civilization. The soft-attack tactic serves us well in this department. We learned this from Rome. Rome took the Christians and fed them to the Lions in gory public spectacles in order to destroy the Christ idea of the divinity of man. We achieve the same thing by isolating Jesus from the Christ. Some of our religious Illuminati deify Jesus as a God. They elevate the messenger to the status of a God and trash the Christ, the divine message of the divinity of man, which the messenger is supposed to represent. Thus, the message becomes lost. You were right on this one too, Peter. This process works so powerfully that one of our Christian Jesus cults, a kind of promise keeper cult, demanded that the Holy Land needs to be cleansed of the infidels. They demand that the promised land be flowing again with milk and honey for the faithful, such as oil, and that it be taken back by Christianity, that is America. They have drawn up plans for a clean Christian take-over of the Middle East. Clean, as they see it, means the liberal use of terrorism that kills mostly people and leaves everything else intact. That's insane, right? Some day they may pull this off in a big way. My point is that if one peels the Christ away from Christianity, the empty Jesus-shell that remains can then be adapted to serve any agenda required for inspiring rage that you care to name. This deep reaching process has been adapted in different versions to every religion there is. That is what is being done by some of our Illuminati. We also use the Gentle Giants Illuminati extensively for racial demonizing. Hitler used the Jews for his dehumanizing game. America substituted for it the Communist Devil, to be followed soon by the Moslem Devil, to be followed in turn by the Hispanic Devil that is presently being 'cultivated' for the not so distant horizon, which may in turn be replaced some day by the Chinese Devil."

"You're totally nuts," was my reply.

The man just smiled. "You proved my point," he said patiently. "That's why it works so powerfully. The insanity involved drives people nuts. Nothing works better than soft insanity, and it doesn't take a huge perpetration to pull it off. Take the Hispanic population of the USA, for instance. It is America's largest racial minority. If we were to stage a string of huge terrorist actions, some of which might destroy a nuclear power complex and kill tens of thousands of people in the process, which is easy to do, and blame the Hispanics for the whole thing with a few bread crumbs on a false trail, the entire country might explode in a racial riot that would invite police state measures on an unimaginable scale. With civil rule suspended we become the king of the castle. We can then demand anything we want, and we'll get it. We may even cite Cuba as a collaborator, especially if we stage a provocation first from this direction, and then go South with nuclear preemptive warfare and take over all of South America."

"That is insane," I replied.

"That is why it is doable," Palmerston replied. "Naturally, this will lead to high-level opportunities in the diplomatic field," he added.

I just shook my head.

"If you don't like our Gentle Giants Illuminati," Palmerston replied, "you may find our more open form of mental manipulation more appealing. It's more honest, really. Terrorism is the most honest process of mental manipulation in any comparison. I call them our Naked Giants Illuminati. Hitler called his equivalent, the SS Organization. Of course Hitler's operations were far too big to be hidden. You may have heard of their Operation Barbarossa, the titanic battle for capturing Russia. Hitler and the SS did things wrong. It became too messy. Hitler drew fifty million people into his war in which tens of millions were killed. He sent a quarter million soldiers to Stalingrad to capture that one city, and only nine thousand of those quarter million made it back. What a waste this had been. Everything had been destroyed. Had the Nazis succeeded in taking Russia, they would have captured a wasteland. We can accomplish much more with infinitely less cost. We use terrorism. Terrorism should really be called irregular warfare. That's our Naked Giants Illuminati warfare. Our goal isn't to destroy a bunch of countries. Of course we will do this if we must. Ideally we would have them surrender to us quietly for their own benefit as they might see it. That's what the nuclear bomb was designed for. The nuclear bomb was primarily designed to be used a terrorist threat so horrible in scope as to inspire the world to surrender itself to us under the guise of a world-government. The bomb hasn't been used yet in any big way for this purpose, but its day will come."

Palmerston paused and shook his head at this point. "Actually this isn't what we really want. The big nukes are too messy. We prefer mini-nukes. America has had mini-nukes since 1959. The smallest, called the Davy Crockett, was deployed in 1961. The trouble is that it's not very useful for terrorist purposes. It's a bit too big and heavy. It weighs fifty pounds. It's also physically too big. It's eleven inches across. Our illuminati want smaller and lighter ones, the size of a coke bottle, and I think they are in the process of getting them. Those new mini-nukes, I hear, are much more useful. I hear that our operatives can strap them onto their bicycle instead of a water bottle, park the bike in a garage of a 200-foot apartment building and simply walk away. With a 10-ton explosive punch a twenty-story apartment building comes down in a cloud of dust. We tested a few of those new ones already. Also, the coke-bottle size makes it easy for our guys to stuff one of these down a six-inch sewer pipe, under the entrance of a stadium, for instance. We've tested the effectiveness of this process with one the old models recently, probably a Davy Crockett. Our people stiffed it down a twelve-inch sewer pipe in front of a movie theatre and waited until the show ended. Our tiny nuke killed 200 people instantly that day, injured 300, destroyed fifty houses, and trashed a hundred cars. And that was only a 10-ton version. We have also tested a larger version of the Davy Crockett recently, a 22-ton device. With these already existing mini-nukes we can pull down any building, anywhere in the world, under any circumstances. Of course, larger ones than these are also available to pull down power dams. I believe the larger Davy Crockett can yield up to a thousand tones, is small enough to be hidden inside a vacuum cleaner, or a tool box, an ice chest, the case of an electric motor, a car seat, or a barrel of beer. Our friends in America built over 2,000 of them. Our agents have the required clearance to use them until the new replacements are stocked up in operational quantities."

"That's sick," I interjected.

"No, Peter, it isn't sick. That's the future," said Palmerston. "It's more efficient that way. The age of the big fish is over. It's too messy to use megaton-size bombs. Our friends in America have gone over board a bit on that front. Their latest strategic plan for a single operation has 16,000 targets designated for destruction with US nukes on the first round. That's a bit messy, don't you think? I would say that the age of the big fish is over and the age of the little fish, the age of nuclear terrorism, has begun. Our private little nuclear blast, the one that we staged in the sewer pipe, terrorized half the world. It would have terrorized more if we hadn't hushed the case up. We kept the lid on. We didn't want to let the word get out that this 'terrorist act' was a nuclear test. The lid stays on until we've got 10,000 of the new ones built. Our stooge, the US military, will build us a thousand a year, with a target of 10,000. You cannot imagine what plans we have already drawn up for those. I can only tell you that we got more political mileage out of our first little test blast that people didn't even know was a nuke-blast, than Hitler managed to get with a quarter million men at war in Stalingrad, which he lost in the end."

I shuddered and shook my head in disbelief.

"Terrorism is warfare, Peter. It's irregular warfare, and it's dirt-cheap," said Palmerston. "Also it kills far fewer people. It's the most efficient form of warfare there is. Hitler needed a whole squadron of his largest bombers to deliver the equivalent punch of twenty tones of dynamite. We can deliver it with a bicycle now, or in a lunch bag disguised as a thermos bottle. That's the achievement of subcritical testing. Our covert operation squads have long desired such capabilities. Once we've got a few tens of thousands built, we'll have absolute terror superiority."

"No you won't," I said. "All you'll have is another XB-70 Valkyrie, the most capable long-range bomber ever built, but was never put into service. It was one of the greatest achievements of aviation engineering, but it became obsolete before it could be mass-produced. Your mini-nukes will suffer the same fate. You won't be able to use them. The moment one of these goes off, the finger of blame will point straight at you."

"Oh, how small-minded you are, Peter!" said Palmerston. "We simply let the story leak that 5,000 mini-nukes have been stolen. Then nobody will know where to point the finger. Even of the big ones, more than twenty have been lost so far in accidents, which 'officially' have never been recovered. The Illuminate probably have them, and if they're used, the world will blame the terrorists. We may even supply the bread crumbs."

"The terrorists will deny any involvement with that," I said.

Palmerston just laughed. "Who will believe them? They are liars, murderers, inhuman beasts, who will believe any of them? In fact, when we supply the mini-nukes to our favorite terrorist illuminate on a need to have basis, we do this so covertly that the regular terrorist crowd wouldn't know anything about it, but they would pick up the blame. After all, as the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The difference is only a matter of perception, but nobody would point the finger at us."

I didn't protest anymore. I just shook my head.

"You must understand that in terrorism, the target isn't what you destroy," said Palmerston. "The victims are sacrificial. In the Vietnam War, the target wasn't Vietnam. When we set off the 10-ton bomb in the sewer pipe, the people that were killed weren't the target. In terrorism the target is society that is deeply torn up inside of it by the sheer horror of what we destroy. Our test case of the sewer explosion earned us more psychological mileage than the Hiroshima bomb did. The damage of the big Hiroshima bomb was too large to be comprehensible. But the damage that our little fish caused was very much comprehensible. The little fish in the sewer hurled two tons of roadbed and gravel upwards and outwards, driven by a million-feet-per-second shockwave that expanded like a deadly fan of horror, cutting people into bloody ribbons and hurtling body parts over a distance of several blocks. This gore is what caused the real damage. Millions saw it. The gore gnawed at their humanity. It made them ideologically insane and politically pliable for the most insane demands. If this test had been followed up by several more explosions of the same type, coming out of the blue without warning, especially in crowded areas without anyone's suspicion, the mental shockwave would have been multiplied a hundred-fold. Once we are ready to do this, we can bring an entire nation to its knees in this manner, because people would sooner surrender their sovereignty than live in the shadow of such unspeakable terror. Indeed, that's what the atom bomb was designed to accomplish in the first place. Nor would anyone ever know who actually did it, because our Russian illuminate have the mini-nukes too, and there will soon be a third group to have them. This means that no rational reprisal is possible, or that any target can be chosen in the resulting rage for reprisal for what would likely escalate into a string of evermore-horrific terrorist acts. That's how we would create an open door for a major preemptive nuclear attack. No nation has the strength to withstand such a convulsion."

"You are insane," I said to him.

"Who would stand in our way, Peter? Reprisal to fight terrorism is globally accepted, and nobody would suspect us of having lit the terrorist-fuse ourselves. It's too unbelievable to be believed."

Palmerston paused and sighed. "The terror effect was well understood already in the 17th Century," he continued. "It was used by the Spanish Inquisition that crippled an entire nation. They burned over 30,000 people at the stake, alive, to terrorize the population. The beastmen ideology was carried forward into Hitler's time, and from there into the heart of America. The state-terrorist process that Joseph de Meistre had idealized is still alive. It has merely been shifted into modern forms of application. Of course our terrorist Illuminati have many more facets, such as judicial torture, deliberate genocide, the destruction of homes, political assassination, and so on. But they all follow the same pattern that is focused on destroying society's will to resist. That's how we will become the world's final unchallenged world-empire. The terrorist groups of our Illuminati will certainly have room for people with your diplomatic skills in this context. You might even help us to achieve an early end, because after all, resistance is futile."

I didn't answer him at all. I was stunned.

"Perhaps with your background in diplomacy you may wish to join our Intelligence Illuminati," said Palmerston and laughed. "That group needs able diplomats for damage control." He looked at me, then shook his head. "Maybe not," he added. "Maybe you're too soft for that task."

"What damage control?" I interjected.

"Intelligence isn't always what you think it is," Palmerston replied. "Intelligence is often dark and messy. Our boys are operating several private torture centers in various parts of the world. Torture is hard to cover up, because nobody likes it. Nevertheless, several of our Illuminati depend on their services. Of course torture is not always about getting information. Sometimes it's about forcing compliance. People seem to be less afraid of dying then they are afraid of torture. That makes the process valuable for empire building. Sometimes it is more profitable to force people's compliance than to kill them. As you can imagine, we need good diplomats that can give the 'service' an air of legitimacy."

"You want me to help you legalize torture?" I interjected. "Forget it!"

"Of course we don't want to legalize it. Not yet, anyway. It's too early for that," said Palmerston. "That's still in the pioneering stage. It will take a few decades of further development before we will see American Presidents officially lobbying to legalize torture for 'intelligence' purposes. But the day will come. The day will come, Peter, when we'll see this happening all over the world. We just want to lay the groundwork for that now."

"Torturing people, that's medieval stuff. We scrapped this insanity with the renaissance," I interjected.

"The renaissance is dead, Peter. The church used torture in those dark ages because torture is efficient for breaking people's resistance."

"If you want to get people to lie to you, it's cheaper to pay them to lie," I said and laughed.

Palmerston shook his head. "Sure they tell us lies, even under torture, but a few always break down and tell us the truth that they believe they would never reveal. The percentage is small, but it works. That is why we cycle large numbers through the process. Mostly, however, it is the process itself that is important."

"What process? You mean you get joy out of hearing people scream? You're getting more disgusting by the minute," I said and covered my face.

"That's not what the process is for. The real victim of the process is society, Peter," Palmerston continued. "We are not monsters that enjoy those ugly things that sometimes become necessary in the name of empire. The process that is important is the resulting dehumanizing of society. This process has long roots, Peter, even in America. America is known throughout the world as the land of the electric chair and as the world-champion of the death penalty. Those are ugly processes. Nobody get any joy out of torturing people to death. Nor did the death penalty ever reduce crime. It increased crime instead by advancing the process of dehumanizing society. We made sure that America would comply. We even once financed a President into power that supported the Ku Klux Klan from the White House. This process of mental 'assassination' is now officially carried forward within the intelligence community in the form of targeted political or economic assassinations. We have created an environment in the targeted countries in which nobody knows when his day is at hand. That's how we destabilize nations all over the world. Official torturing in the physical sense is also on the horizon. It's just a step away. You will soon see official torture centers being operated by your country in many parts of the world, all of them totally legal and sanctioned by the majority of the American electorate that will be giving their vote to it. Torture, Peter, actually isn't that bad. Sure, countless people die along the way, but in the overall picture it is the least lethal of the dehumanizing processes. It is also often short in duration in comparison with the mental torture that your own nation inflicts on its death-row victims. Society is well aware that many on death row are innocent, but it keeps on killing them. But before it kills them, it tortures them mentally. It keeps them on death row without hope for long periods of time without them ever knowing when their day of death will come. America prides itself to be the toughest society in the world, with the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and the highest rate of crime to feed the dehumanizing system."

"What you are raving about is not rooted in American culture and can be healed," I protested. "America's culture is rooted in the greatest humanist renaissance in the history of civilization. It's all your doing that turned America into a sewer, as you have so proudly declared."

"Of course it is, Peter. Congratulation! You are finally beginning to see that by joining us, you are not really switching sides. You would only become more efficient. By joining us you might find yourself in a position to be able to smoothen out some of the rough edges that trouble you so much."

I shook my head and raised a hand to stop his mockery.

"Yes, I can see that the Intelligence Illuminati might not be to your liking after all. Maybe you would like to pursue something else," Palmerston said moments later. "Our latest experiment is much more gentle. Also it is completely hidden. In fact, it is so completely covered over with lies that it is hailed by society as the savior of mankind. Unfortunately the project has so far not worked very well," said the man. "I am talking about our Environmental Illuminati. That's the group that has banned some of the most essential achievements of mankind under the environmental guise. They've banned the DDT pesticide, which once nearly eradicated malaria before they banned it. Now malaria is back in a big way. Malaria is an agonizing disease as the parasite eats a person's liver. In Africa all by itself, every forty seconds a person dies of malaria. Mostly the victims are children. This goes on hour after hour, year after year. That adds up to over a million needless deaths per year worldwide. And poverty kills even more. Some put the death toll from poverty at 30,000 a day. Most of them again are children. That adds up to ten million per year. You were shocked when you realized that the cruise missile that you saw fly by your house a few days ago might have been intended for Baltimore where it would have killed almost a million people. But why should you be shocked at this miniscule thing when you don't blink an eye when your noble nation commits ten million people to death in needless horrible agony, year after year, with your own policies? Compared to what you are doing our Terrorist Illuminati and our Intelligence Illuminati are playing with trifles. They are almost saintly in comparison. And what's worse, your noble country doesn't even bother to stop its own killing with an intensity that makes Hitler look like a saint, which would be easy to stop. Instead, you defend the need for more of this killing by organizing world-depopulation conferences and poverty building measures. Our Environmental Illuminati are set up to help you along to reach your goal to depopulate the world. Unfortunately their projects aren't working too well, like the DDT ban to bring malaria back and increase food spoilage by protecting the pests. People are beginning to realize that there exists no scientific evidence that DDT is harmful to anything except the pests that plaque mankind. We need a diplomatic offensive to turn that failure around."

Palmerston stopped, waiting for my reaction.

"Your own people are doing these ugly things, Peter," said Palmerston. "And the reason why they are doing this is astonishingly simple. They are doing it, because we created a movement with our Illuminati that demands this to be done. As I said earlier, you are killing more than ten million people a year for us. You are doing this on our orders. We demand that these people won't have a chance to develop themselves and use up their country's resources, which belong to us. Our Environmental Illuminati is one of the most powerful groups that we have to assured that. Unfortunately it still falls far short of its potential. It could be immensely more effective than it is. In time it probably will be. There is talk about developing a whole new disease vector that effects the food supply and is transmitted by protected natural processes. Apparently the killing potential is endless in the biological arena."

I just shook my head in disbelief over his arrogance.

"You are right," he said. "You wouldn't fit in with them. The people who are in this group have no humanity left in them, not the slightest shred of it. The horrors they instigate cause quiet and deep insanity in them that is slowly destroying them as a people. It's a kind of occupational hazard," he said and laughed. "It's destroying them as human beings, because they know that the killing could be stopped with a change in policy, which of course we won't allow. We turned them into beastmen, and now they find themselves trapped and in a rage.

"Our Beastmen, oops, Environmental Illuminati, have also banned the CFC refrigerants, which had once made refrigeration affordable around the world, including in poor countries," he said. "The rich in the rich countries can afford the large price increases for the new systems that utilize expensive and inefficient refrigeration, but the poor countries can't afford this nonsense. That is how we are depopulating the poor countries without anyone in the world even raising an objection. With refrigeration fast breaking down, the poor people's already scarce food resources will invariably spoil. We'll be seeing more and more of this in the near future. People will quietly die in large numbers once cold-chain begins to disintegrate. In this manner our Environmental Illuminati might soon be killing more people per year than the historic Master-Beastman Adolf Hitler had killed in his entire reign.

"Of course, as you may already know," Palmerston continued, "our gentle Beastmen Illuminati have already got a process launched for banning 80% of mankind's fossil fuel use under the guise of global warming. Without large-scale energy use the global industries will collapse, farming will collapse, transportation will collapse, and civilization will end. If our gentle Beastmen Illuminati can pull this off, which is not certain at this stage, the resulting killing, oops, depopulation, will be phenomenal. It will be on a scale that is unimaginable in today's terms. All of this, of course, will happen one way or another. Nobody can really stop us, least of all, you. As I said, you and your few friends are nothing but a bunch of amateurs."

I raised my hand to stop him.

He just smiled. "Of course you have to object," he said. "Your humanity won't allow anything else, but it won't stop the depopulation that we have already started to set into motion. You can't stop it, working from the outside. The multifaceted assault by our Environmental Illuminati will so collapse the populations in the darker skinned regions of the world that their populations will dwindle and fizz out. This is our goal. As I said, the Third World people do exert undue pressure onto the natural resources of the world, which should be conserved for our future requirements. Conservatism is mankind's future. Conservatism means poverty and starvation. It stands opposed to universal development that would enable mankind to live, but would endanger every empire in existence. Consequently, we'll let the Third World go hell, to start with. You know what I mean with that. We'll give them their freedom."

"You mean the freedom of the grave yard," I interjected.

"Our people call this population management," he said and smiled.

"Artificial population collapse is genocide!" I replied.

"Why do you use such harsh words?" said the man. "We call it population management. A rancher would call it, culling the herd. Population collapse and genocide are harsh terms, Peter. Sure, that's what it adds up to in the end. It's easily arranged by taking away what people need to live. However, we prefer to call it population management, because people love it that way. They help us to do this. Management is something noble. It appears to be intelligent. We simply tell society that the world is overpopulated and offer a few pennies to whichever scientist can proof it. I actually couldn't believe how many scientists came stampeding to our door to 'prostitute' their conscience for the few pennies we offered to get their valued support for our gentle Beastmen Illuminati's doctrines. The DDT and CFC bans have killed countless millions of people, and the global warming fossil fuels ban will cause far more damage still. It is really amazing, Peter, how many 'prostitute' scientists support us on the global warming front already, for just a few pennies. Naturally, there exists no scientific imperative for any of these bans. The 'prostitute' scientists provide us with the imperatives. It is amazing to watch how readily, and for how little, some scientist are willing to stand before society and betray its trust with lies of the foulest sort, like insisting that the grass is red and the sky green. Of course we also have active environmental programs in progress, like the one that created abject poverty in Africa that turned much of Africa into a disease-breeding caldron, which for example produced AIDS for the world. Environmentalism has become the new name of antidevelopment activism and the destruction of humanity and humanist culture.

"So, what do you think," Palmerston added finally and sat down again. "Which program would you like to join? As you see, we own all the cards in every game. You can't possibly challenge us on this vast front, which we control. To attempt such a foolish thing would be like hitting your head against a wall. Wouldn't you rather be joining us? In fact, our Illuminati network is so vast and diverse that most people and organizations that are a part of it are not even aware that they are primarily serving us."

"And that's how you work?" I said in a normal tone of voice with a faint smile, almost giving the man a compliment.

"That's the only way an empire can work these days," he said smiling. "The religious groups want to do things their way. So we let them. We know how they react. We know for instance how a castle has to move in a chess game. So, we use our 'castles', as we need them. And the other groups want to do things their own way, too, usually some other way. The chess game has many types of pieces that all move their own way. An expert player loves them all for what they can do. He uses them like so many different tradesmen that offer their services for hire. That how we look at the Illuminati. We just plug them in as needed. The bankers for instance, they know that their looting operations are collapsing the economies, and so do we. And this is precisely what we want them to do. So we encourage them to do their thing. Sometimes they come to us and demand that we rearrange the world for them. They demand a big war now and then, the bigger the better, behind which they always manage to reshuffle the deck and find some new ways to get their feudal financier system working again. It appears they have their eyes set on totally stealing the world's physical resources, this time around, rather than merely stealing the world's money that is fast becoming worthless. So we help the bankers to get what they need? After all, they are a big part of the Fondi Empire. So, in order to help them, we go to the war boys. We give the war boys a few hints and the usual 'support' and they will cook something up on the scale that serves our empire's purpose. We might even involve the bestiality freaks of the Hitler types. We can trust them to make the whole operation effective. That's all we do. Then we stand back and let things happen. Occasionally a little adjustment may be needed, or a few countermeasures need to be put in place in order to make the whole thing look acceptable to the world. It's great fun playing both sides of the coin. We've become rather good at it."

"And that's how it really works?" I said.

"On average things work out exactly as we have planned," he said, "even with everybody thinking that they are playing their own game and doing their own thing. We have a word for this kind of multi-level game. We call it 'synchronized-anarchy.' The French are more elegant. They simply call it synarchism."

"It appears that a whole lot of different projects come together under this name," I replied.

"We are getting more efficient in using people," said Palmerston. "We have come a long ways since the days of feudalism, even since the days of colonialism. Now we are in the age of synarchism. With too many empires competing with each other, as we had it in the colonial days, things became too inefficient. The world has become too small for that. There is only enough room for a single empire in the world. When we get it set up the world will be at peace. The world will be a giant Roman Pantheon, with all having a little autonomy to do their thing, but not too much of it, and we will be the master of everything. All the big nations will be broken up into tiny fragments that we will control. Don't you think that this is a far better arrangement than everybody fighting each other? So you see, we are really peace-loving people at heart on the higher level. Unfortunately, this higher goal has not yet been fully reached. Until then, there is still a lot of joggling to be done on the everyday level, to break down the resistance, to eliminate the nation states as functional entities. Stuff like that. Unfortunately, in order for this end game to be won things need to get nasty for a while. How else can we be effective and reach our goal quickly? Surely, you can see the need for this, can't you?"

"I suppose you see this as something that can't be avoided," I commented.

"That's just the way things are," he said. "Sometimes some of the countless groups that we support also fight each other. This can get nasty too, but it adds a little spice to the game, which is good. It helps to obscure the master plan still further. It makes the game interesting and incredibly non-transparent. So the spice is good my friend."

"This means you are fallible after all," I said and smiled.

"We don't expect everything to work out all the time," said the man. "Stupid people make stupid moves. They start wars that backfire, or they can't get the wars going that we want, even with our support behind them."

"I suppose you can turn even that to your advantage," I egged him on.

"At times this is more amusing than irritating," Palmerston replied. "It can get embarrassing at times when one of our groups gets cheeky and tries to imitate us. These are usually fascist groups. Those people are stupid. They play grossly executed single level games that are so transparent that it is actually embarrassing to watch. Usually we get the conspiracy hunters to go after them and expose them."

"That adds some spice for the news media too, which you also control," I commented. "This keeps the public's eyes off the real thing, right?"

"I see you are getting the drift," said the man.

"I suppose, you don't organize all the minor details anyway, those that don't matter anyway in the overall context. Am I aright?" I asked.

"The spice obscures the central issue. That's not a trivial matter. We value that," answered Palmerston. "Otherwise, you are quite correct. That is also the reason why I can say with certainty that you can't possibly know what the cruise missile incidence was all about. You don't even know if it was a part of our strategy. Should you be lucky enough to figure this out, you still don't know what level of strategy it was a part of and which group was behind the game."

"No one in the world can figure this out," I agreed.

"And that makes us invincible," said the man. "That is also what I am offering you to become a part of."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You are telling me that if you launch a terrorist incidence that kills, say, 10,000 people, that this horror show might be just a cover-up for other games lurking in the background. Are you saying that the same hand that killed those people might also set up a relief fund to aid the survivors and pledge massive contributions to that fund, publicly, while at the same time the other hand is busy orchestrating the real game for the ultimate destruction of the entire country? In other words, you can meet your objective without anyone even suspecting that it was you who did it. But you say you won't stop there. You'll use the worldwide public outrage as another cover to launch a nuclear terror attack against China, Russia, and India, to soften the ground. These are the levels of strategy that you are talking about, aren't they? And you expect me to join that?"

The man nodded.

Moments later he shook his head and smiled. "Actually, I don't expect you to join us right now," he said. "Your humanity won't allow this, right? On the other hand, you will also realize that your decision too, involves various levels of perception. Some day you will reach the level of thinking where you realize that the game is really the same all the way through. There is no fundamental difference between Hitler's gas chambers, the Hiroshima bombing, the Vietnam War, the destruction of an entire country for oil or whatever, even the destruction of an entire nation in as much as this can be arranged, or an entire continent. These 'incidences' are all the same in principle, aren't they? Destroying the USA wouldn't add a new dimension to the game. It's like playing another card. It's all been done already. The only thing that hasn't happened so far is that the USA became selected as the sacrificial target. Once you think in these larger terms, all the various aspects become drawn together towards an unavoidable end. When this happens and you begin to recognize that, then you will join us. You will join us for nothing else than to make the transition less painful for humanity. Actually, we don't want people that join us under threats. Those tend to become traitors. You will join us when you will see that joining us is your only option for aiding humanity in some way, like softening the pain that we have to impose, unfortunately."

"What you say is monstrous," I said and stood up. "I can never allow myself to be a part of such a destructive process, even if I can lessen its impact. My goal has to be to stop you!"

"That's not an intelligent choice," said the man calmly. "You will realize that soon. I am offering you life. I am offering you survival. I am sure, you will want to survive. As to what I said, let me tell you it will happen. It will happen with or without you. That much is certain. The only uncertainty that concerns you, is, if you will personally survive the outcome or not."

"I sooner spend my entire life fighting you to prevent that outcome," I said angrily. This time I didn't stand up to leave, though I should have. I suddenly felt daring to stand up to the man mentally and put him in his place, which no one may have dared to do before.

"Fight us?" Palmerston repeated and laughed. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Your game has a flaw," I said emphatically. "Every game that is centered on violence has a fundamental flaw, and I mean all forms of violence. Looting and legal stealing, and pillaging from society, that is violence too. Your entire bankers' clan should be incarcerated for their crimes against humanity."

The man just laughed and laughed, pointing at me, as if I had cracked the funniest joke of all times.

"Let me explain something to you," I interrupted his laughter. "Your entire game, from top to bottom, at every level, is totally dependent on the voluntary compliance by society. That's a factor that you regard as assured by society's utterly small-minded thinking. That factor will be your Achilles' Heel."

Palmerston started to laugh even more now. "That's getting really funny," he said.

"I suppose you know the Achilles legend," I defended my case. "Achilles was a great hero of the Trojan War. According to Greek mythology, his mother dipped him at birth into the magic waters of the river Styx, to render him immortal. She held him at the heel, which therefore the magic waters could not reach. Homer though, suggested in the ^Iliad^ that his weak spot wasn't his heel, but his pride, and possibly also his love for the Trojan princess. I would like to suggest that the same is also true about you, in respect to your arrogant project to create a world-empire. Your whole plan depends on society's small-minded thinking. If my friends and I were to succeed in getting humanity to snap out of its stupor and become human again, you too, would wake up. Your entire game would be finished. Your whole empire-idea would cease to exist, even the little bit of a real empire that you have so far cobbled together."

The man stopped laughing.

"If my friends and I can find a way to get society to uplift itself to a higher level of thinking," I continued, "based on the recognition and acknowledgment of the real principles of the universe that are also the principles of our common humanity, your games would no longer work at any level, nor would society need to bother with trying to figure out the various levels of your strategies. None of them would work. You'd be finished!"

The man listened patiently and then applauded. I expected him to protest. Instead he applauded.

"You are totally right," he said some moments later. "This is our Achilles' heel. If the entire global society would snap out of its small-minded thinking, our empire would have no foundation to exist on. It would blow away with the wind. But really, my friend, the chance for that to actually happen is more remote than the farthest solar system in our galaxy. There has never been a period in history where society developed a renaissance that the imperials of the time didn't wipe out. They eradicated the Golden Renaissance with eighty years of religious wars in Europe, and they killed the next renaissance with cultural warfare that hasn't ended to the present day. Cultural warfare enables one to nip the slightest trend towards a new renaissance right in the bud. Therefore, what you propose, my friend, creating a new renaissance across the world, is way out of reach for you. Your precious USA can't even land a man on the moon anymore, much less get to the nearest solar system, physically or mentally."

He paused and began to grin. "As you may know," he said, "we have already destroyed most of the industries that once gave you the capability to go to the moon. We simply bankrupted them. We destroyed them with money, just as we destroyed the American society itself, with money. Money is your Achilles' Heel; and it's more than that. It is our Trojan Horse that you took in. Adam Smith laid a golden egg for us centuries ago. It was intended to become a Trojan Horse. That plan worked beautifully. You took the horse in. You took it to your heart. You embraced it. You haven't even recognized after all this time at what level of the game Adam Smith laid his egg into your lap. Nor was he subtle about it. He called his egg, Greed-Based Economics. That, all by itself, should have given the game away as a Trojan virus, especially considering the high level intellectual background of the American society at the time. The American farmers were known as the Latin Farmers at this time, and for a good reason. Nevertheless, our friend Adam Smith had been able to do this virus thing on them in the form of Greed-Based Economics. Adam Smith snared your people in spite of their precious scientific background. And you my friend want to reverse all that and do it globally? That's laughable. I find it ridiculous that you would even bring this up. You can't possibly be as naive to imagine that your wild-eyed dreams could ever come true. The fact is, we own the minds of the American society far more deeply than Hitler's public relations experts owned the minds of Germany, and they were good at their craft as you probably know."

I was about to laugh at him, but I didn't. "I find it ridiculous that you think I would help you with your goals?" I said to him instead of laughing.

The man just smiled. "You can't avoid helping us. We are everywhere. We have countless supporters. Many don't even know that they are supporting us. I merely want to give you a chance to be more efficient in what you are already doing, since you appear to be more intelligent than most people. In fact I find your openness invigorating. Nobody has ever talked back at me like you do. You have fire. I value that. That is also why you will be joining us, so that you can become more effective. As a bonus, your life would be more secure. You may even be able to find ways with us to reach your goals, such as assuring that not too many people become adversely affected by the empire's programs. In any case, you won't be able to survive what's coming unless you're a part of our team. Nobody will survive, unless we allow them to survive. If you are against us, you won't. If you are with us, we'll look after you."

"You talk like you are owning the world already," I interjected.

"We will soon own the world, but even now, nobody can stop us. That's one of the hardest things for new people to understand," said Palmerston. "People look at the Great Depression of the 1930s and say to themselves, we got out of that, the economy recovered, we survived this little glitch and came out stronger. Indeed, the American society did come out stronger, but this won't happen again. Roosevelt took over the government and overturned what we had set up. He took control of the Federal Reserve and gave the nation its money back and its credit. After that he started a huge program of infrastructure building and rebuilding. America has built vast water management projects, electric power projects, industrial projects, and transportation projects. Everybody was working and had a good and secure life to look forward to. The American people had universal health care, social security, and the best education. The farmers got equitable prices for their products that they could live with and prosper. That's what got America out of the Depression. Roosevelt's policy did this. America survived the Depression in the thirties mostly because the family farm was still a viable entity to deliver the needed food. None of that will happen at the next crash, which is coming soon. This crash will not cause another Depression. It will cause a Dark Age such as you have never seen before, that most people cannot survive unless their survival is deemed useful to us."

"America will survive. We have survived the worst," I countered him, almost inaudibly now. "When the chips are down we will find the new leaders that can get us out of our mess. We may do it again with policies like Roosevelt's."

"You are dreaming," said Palmerston. "This will never happen again. Roosevelt was a traitor from our midst, working against us. We will make sure that there will never be another Roosevelt on the political horizon. If anyone as much as speaks the name Roosevelt, he will be stomped into the ground politically. He will be wiped out so fast that his name will be mud instantly and remain mud for decades to come. Look at LaRouche, what example we made of him. We vilified him. We put him jail. And when he ever gets out, we'll vilify him some more. Just talk to anyone on the street and mention his name, and people will call him a nut-cake. That's how powerful and efficient our Illuminati have become. Even your Presidents, should one ever be as foolish as to speak the big 'R' word, or to even think it, will be ground into dust. We didn't have the capability in the 1930s to do this. That's why Roosevelt slipped by our guard and defeated us and saved the nation. That won't happen again. World War II became our training ground where psychological warfare was put on the map. Our Illuminati now own the process. They made it their task to assure that Delanor Roosevelt was the last of his kind. There won't be another Roosevelt ever. Naturally, without him America will not survive except on our terms. That's the point. And our terms will be harsh, as harsh as Hitler's terms were for the useless eaters. Why do you think we are promoting Islamic and Christian fundamentalism as we do? We do it to lower the platform of civilization around the world, to prepare the world for our One World Rule without elected governments, a rule that reverts back to the old bankers dictates that Shakespeare had laughed at with his play, the Merchant of Venice. We are getting back to that. We are going back to primitive rule, but on the whole front. We own the food production. We own the production of everything that people need. We'll be rationing things out to whoever we want. Most of all, we own the money. I can assure you that soon people will be lining up at our door, begging us to be allowed to join. They'll be willing to give their life for the opportunity that I am offering you right now. I am offering you a wonderful chance to make a name for yourself in one of our many Illuminati organizations, which form the leading edge while few people even know they exist."

I nodded slightly and most hesitantly, with a sickening feeling in my gut.

He seemed pleased with this reaction, until I spoke about Kennedy.

"You can't be so sure, as you boast you are. You failed in the past, and you'll fail again. You allowed Kennedy to slip by your guard, didn't you? He spoke the 'R' word and got elected. He didn't speak the 'R' word directly, but he spoke about universal economic development. He became President on this platform. He rearranged the financial system to degree, for this development. He created the Space Program. He made it possible for America to develop the technologies and the infrastructures to usher in a New Era. Not only did he inspire America to put a man on the moon, which was a hard goal, but he also inspired them to over-achieve. The American people put two men on the moon, and not only once, but repeatedly, and they brought a car along to drive around in it. That venture made America rich. For every dollar that America spent on this technological frontier, it ended up fourteen dollars richer in economic benefits. Those riches were derived from the various types of fallout from the science driver programs. All of America was glowing with optimism in those days. The country was rich in innovations. It must have been immensely painful for your fondi to watch us in America coming out of the shell of impotence that your Illuminati had created during the McCarthy/Truman era."

Palmerston's smile faded.

"Kennedy wasn't a brilliant man," he said moments later. "Of course his family was on wrong side, as you would see it. But he had an idea, a right idea, and it wasn't even his idea. The idea that he toyed with was to implement the General Welfare Principle that the USA is founded on, and to implement it with scientific and technological progress. His second idea was to spread the implementation of this principle across the world. You cannot imagine what this would have meant, had he succeeded. It would have created a renaissance for America and a deathblow for every empire on the planet. Kennedy had to be executed for his intended crime against the Empire. Also his legacy had to be destroyed with him. The Vietnam War became absolutely necessary to achieve that end, and in order to get the war going we had to kill Kennedy. He had already ordered the US withdrawal from Vietnam. We were sweating until one of our best insiders managed to countermand Kennedy's withdrawal order and keep the order hidden until the President was dead. Once he was dead, the war was quickly ramped up. Of course, once the war was successfully raging and killing people we organized the peace movement in America as a cultural warfare element that was designed to destroy the USA culturally from within in order to preempt every chance that might unfold for the USA to recover itself from that war. The bottom line is, we weren't at war with Kennedy at all, not personally. His family was on our side. But we were at war with the principle that he represented, and I must say we were quite successful in shutting this principle down. The Vietnam War was a splendid success story."

"No, it wasn't a success story. Why don't you admit your defeat?" I interjected. "You have screwed up with Kennedy. The assassination was almost impossible to cover up. It is not unknown in the world that you somehow countermanded the Presidential order to withdraw from Vietnam, and then kept the war going and made a mess of it. People are also aware that you created the peace movement to exploit the momentum of the war for an even deeper destruction in America. That was done in the old Venetian style, a replay of the Venetians staging both the Reformation and the Counterreformation, which once unleashed eighty years of war. But this old trick didn't work for you in America either. America wasn't torn by internal cultural war. You had failed on every front. America recovered perfectly after the war. You failed big time Mr. Palmerston. This means that you can fail again."

"You don't know what you are talking about," said Palmerston. "This proves that you are an amateur. Everything that we did was highly successful. You say America recovered. No such thing happened. You keep you gaze fixed on what you saw, while you keep your eyes closed to what you should have seen, and would have seen had we not intervened. You simply can't imagine what enormous prosperity America would have enjoyed, and the whole world likewise, if we had allowed Kennedy to live. The General Welfare Principle would have transformed the world. You simply can't imagine the magnitude of global development that you would have seen then. You can't imagine it, because you don't bother to look at the potential that was there. You fail to see what might have been, simply because the potential was never realized. That's how small you are in your thinking. Consequently you cannot recognize the magnitude of what we prevented."

Palmerston laughed in an icy sort of way. "Also you tell me that you recovered from the effects of the war. How small-minded you are! You simply have no idea to what height of prosperity America would have risen, but didn't, and the same in respect and in global esteem, had the Vietnam War never happened. You were on the way to transforming the world into an oasis of plenty. It will take America fifty years to recover from what has been lost in those few years of war, and those fifty years must be counted as lost years, if indeed America will ever recover that loss."

"Nevertheless, the Kennedy assassination was a mistake, if not strategically, it certainly was so technically," I interjected.

"As you know, we corrected our mistake," replied Palmerston calmly.

"Yes, you tried to cover it up, but you couldn't do this either. You made a terrible mess of it," I countered him.

I continued poking holes through Palmerston facade. That was becoming fun. "Your lies were paper-thin," I said. "The whole world knows that Oswald didn't assassinate Kennedy. The President was assassinated by a team of three professionals with three separate bullets, unless you can train a bullet to travel in three different directions through a man's body."

"Why do you insist on using such a harsh expression?" Palmerston replied. "Assassination is not the right term. "President Kennedy wasn't assassinated. He was executed for his crime of defiance. He did everything wrong. He never listened to our demands. But he wasn't executed for what he did. Sure, he commanded that America get out of Vietnam, which the Military Industrial complex didn't like either. Sure, he had already issued the withdrawal order. That was a bad thing for him to do, but that's not what he was executed for. He wasn't executed for anything he had actually done. As I told you, he was executed for what he was about to do. The Vietnam War thing was a smoke screen in that respect, though it had its uses in other respects. In the Kennedy case the war was used to lay out false bread crumbs for the conspiracy hunters to follow."

"I see, it was one the many levels of your game to hide the real game," I interrupted him. "But that didn't work either, did it?"

"It worked better than you can imagine. We got the Warren Commission to put a lid on the Kennedy affair, but not too tightly," said Palmerston.

I just smiled at him. "There you see! You're not infallible."

"The lid was put on lightly on purpose, Peter. We wanted it to stay loose so that the Vietnam conspiracy theory could develop. You've got to give the conspiracy seekers something to find. So it wasn't a screw-up. It was intended. Of course Vietnam was a factor. It was one of the factors that determined the timing of the execution of Kennedy. The combination of the two projects worked well. The loose link that tied the execution of Kennedy to the Vietnam War was intended to keep the lid airtight on the real issue. The real issue had to be protected at all cost. And it was protected. We laid out a few breadcrumbs that pointed in the wrong direction. The Kennedy execution was a preemptive execution for something of utmost importance to us. Had the real issue been detected, the consequences might have set us back many decades. The real issue was that Kennedy had been talking about global economic development, to be carried out with American help and with the help of Japan."

"This development would have been carried forward on the wave of the optimism that came out of the Space Program that President Kennedy launched," I interjected. "What Kennedy started would have created a global renaissance that would have never ended. It took you almost ten years to shut this optimism down. People were watching our American astronauts in every country in the world. They saw them driving vehicles around on the moon almost ten years after Kennedy was killed, oops, was executed. Everybody saw them. They saw the American Moon Rover in action on their television in the jungles of Africa. They celebrated with joy the great achievements for mankind that they saw. They saw a bright future for themselves in this unfolding New World. It took your fondi empire a dozen years of gore and brutality flowing out of Vietnam to shut the cultural optimism down that flowed out of the Apollo Space Program. And then you killed our dollar to make the damage complete. If it hadn't been for you ravishing assault on the US Dollar in 1971, turning it into a gambling chip when you killed the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system, this space-powered optimism would have continued. The reason the optimism was squashed was your wrecking of the physical economy that started in 1971 and your wrecking of the American spirit with the Vietnam War, and your wrecking of the dollar. Still, it took you more than a dozen years to wreck all of that, even after Kennedy was dead. It is hard to imagine what fantastically revolutionary advances mankind would have made, that would have brightened the world, had Kennedy lived."

"That's what I keep telling you, Peter. The writing was on the wall. Our Illuminati could foresee this happening. They had to react. The existence of the Empire was at stake. Kennedy's promise to create a whole New World were seen by the Empire as a capital crime of the greatest severity. If Kennedy's promises had come true, as they nearly did, they would have threatened the Fondi Empire far more severely than the Roosevelt program ever had."

"Of course Kennedy's program would have worked if you had allowed it," I interjected again. "That proves that you are vulnerable."

"No, Peter, we are not vulnerable. We detected Kennedy's crime and dealt with it," said Palmerston. "Everybody in the Empire knew what Kennedy's crime was. Everybody knew what we had to prevent from coming true, because this envisioned New World had no place for the Fondi Empire or any empire ever. It was a most far-flung operation that brought Kennedy down, involving organizations from several countries. It was a typical crisis response by the Empire. The concept of empire would have stood in the way of Kennedy's global development process. Politically, Kennedy would have simply overruled us. As I said, the Kennedy execution was a most necessary preemptive execution, and nothing was left to chance my friend. The execution was a sure thing. His brother promised to follow in his footsteps. His execution too, was therefore likewise a preemptive execution for the same reason. Preemption is a perfect tool for preventing human development.

"Preemption is also useful for starting wars, especially big wars that wipe out entire nations or groups of people," said Palmerston moments later, "like the Spanish people may be wiped out, or the Arabs, or the Chinese, or the Jews as Hitler did. It's easily done. First you vilify them. Then 'nuke' them out of existence. And if you play your cards right, nobody will stand in your path. It's easily done. Preemption works well for that, but it is useless for everything else. This makes preemption exclusively an imperial game. Also, as you see more and more of it, you will remember that what you see is NOT what you get, and what you don't see is what you might have gotten. In any case, what you see on the surface is merely an aspect of the many layers of the real game. That is why the real game is so much fun. Nobody can figure it out. Our Illuminati love the preemption element of it. They apply it to get gullible people to create wars for their self-destruction, carefully hiding the fact that one can't win a war preemptively. Preemption opens the gates to the destruction of civilization. That's what empires are built on, the destruction of civilization. We never wage wars to win them."

Palmerston spoke in a quiet voice after that. "Yes, we screwed up by letting the Kennedy-clan get past the gate," he said. "I agree with you that we failed on this count, but we fixed it. We fixed it so well with the Kennedy executions that no one has tried to follow this path since, except LaRouche, and we fixed that problem too, preemptively."

"I agree, you always came through in the end with your multilevel games," I replied quietly, "and the world is infinitely worse of for it, while the Fondi Empire is more secure than it has ever been. But can this 'winning' streak, such as it is, be maintained? You can't win all of the games all of the time."

"With the kind of people we are now getting on board we can keep this up forever," he replied. "We haven't missed a single beat since the Kennedy days, have we?"

I nodded slightly.

"That is why I am certain you will want to join the world's leading edge team, the winning team!" he said. "It's a great place to be. It is exciting to be in total control."

I nodded again, reluctantly.

"Maybe we shouldn't invite this man onto our team," said Antonio, who had stood silently by while Palmerston spoke.

"No, he's all right," Palmerston waved him off. "He could be a great asset for us. He has asked questions that no one has asked before in an interview, and he provided the answers himself, which will ultimately convince him to join us. He also knows that he needs us. He knows that his precious idea of Love-Based Economics, his lateral system, has no hope of ever being realized unless the Empire allows it. He'll join us for that, if for nothing else. In some cases this could be beneficial for the Empire. Also deep down he knows that he really has no other choice but to be on our team. No other choice exists that assures his survival. He knows that too. Most people that we recruit don't come to this conclusion for months. He did so almost immediately. I am impressed. As far as I am concerned, he will be on our team, Antonio. We can count on that."

Antonio seemed to object.

Palmerston overruled him. "Did you take note of the question that he didn't ask?" Palmerston countered Antonio. "That's highly significant. He didn't ask how much we are going to pay him. Everybody else had made this their first question, but this man didn't. He understands that something much bigger is involved here than money, something that is bigger even than oneself, something that can change the course of history or end it, and redirect the destiny of all mankind one way or another. He knows that there is a need for a levelheaded focus, even in the Empire, so that those things won't get out of hand. He knows that he could play a role in this, and thereby really do some good for humanity, within those parameters. That is what he ultimately really wants to do. He wants to do some good for humanity. He knows that he has an opportunity to do this by joining us. Working against us, he hasn't got a chance in hell to do anything. He knows that too. He also knows that in comparison with the chance that he will have with us to do something for humanity, money is of no great importance. That is why I can guarantee you, Antonio, that he will join us."

I deeply resented Palmerston's confidence as to what my reaction would ultimately be. How dare he even suggest that! I resented his arrogance in suggesting that no other option existed for me than those he had put on the table as if they were a gift from his great heart, designed especially for me. Yes, he has been convincing. Evidently, that was his 'professional' qualification. That's what I resented the most about him, because his evidence seemed to be based on solid facts that left no open window for humanity to escape from, and get away from its boxed-in position under his empire. I, too, seemed to be caught up in that box. I could feel the pain of the processes that was already strangling humanity. I resented him for the sake of humanity.

However in the upwelling of this resentment his credibility was breaking down for me. I found it unceasingly more difficult to play my game of drawing him out, because every step became more scary. I was clutching onto the most fundamental truth that I knew, that Steve, Ushi, and I had talked about on that bright day when we first met in Leipzig. I clutched onto the idea that the principles of the universe and mankind are not designed for the self-destruction of the universe and mankind. Out of this realization a glimmer of hope emerged that transformed his carefully crafted game into a bluff without any real substance behind it. That bluff could be exposed, I felt. It could be torn to shreds, bit by bit.

The very reason for which he had brought the tape recorder along to record our conversation, suddenly came to light to me as a part of this bluff. He was practically oozing with confidence that the taped conversation could never be used against him and the Fondi Empire, since the Empire already owns all the key players in the political world. If I were to attempt to use the tape against him, I would most likely be branding myself as a traitor and end up as dead meat rotting in some dark alley. On the other hand, if I were to find someone who isn't a part of the empire, the tape would be useless, too. Who would believe one word of what had been said? People would find the whole thing ridiculous and laugh at me. That's what made the tape recording so painful.

I looked at the tape recorder. The tape was still moving. I hated this tape. I hated the whole gesture. I was tempted to reach out and hit the stop button, but I didn't. As if my hand was held back by some invisible force, I couldn't do even this little thing of pressing the stop button. And so, the recording proceeded.

Eventually Antonio took over again. He appeared to be the real recruiter. He told me that once a person decides to become a part of the empire that has as its goal to rule the planet for the good of humanity, this person has to be prepared to do ugly things without a whimper in order to achieve that goal. "Such things are necessary," he said. He said that I would have to create for myself a new kind of morality, focused on the goal of the Empire becoming unquestioningly supreme in the world. He said that this goal has to become my goal if I wanted to stay alive. Antonio then praised the 'high morality' of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and suggested strongly that I would want to study it.

"Hobbes gave us the philosophy of total freedom," he said in a serious tone of voice. "When you understand Hobbes, you understand that nothing in the world matters except the imperial goal. The only thing that matters is the goal and the power one has to amass to reach that goal. With Hobbes' freedom philosophy taking over your consciousness, I can guarantee you that the very concept of love becomes irrelevant to you, even loyalty. You will experience total freedom. There is no such thing as loyalty in the real world anyway, only survival. If you don't perform, you're dead. Friendships, alliances, patriotism, that's all kids' stuff. They are irrelevant. Only the goal isn't. That is why we will succeed and will rule the entire world without exception, because we are free, free of constraints. The Fondi Empire is the 'land' of the free. Even the religious fanatics, who are ready to kill themselves in religious wars, don't have this freedom. They will kill themselves all right, and we utilize them for this tendency, for this fantasy that they have, but they won't taste true freedom."

Antonio suddenly paused, and then laughed. He put a hand on my shoulder. "Sure, we have failed with our last mission, that of the cruise missile. We've lost three months of work. But we haven't lost the freedom to try again, even to try something bigger. In any case, that missile launching wasn't meant to be an isolated incident," he added quietly. "It was meant to be the beginning of a new trend. The reason that you failed to respond as you were expected, merely indicates that the timing was a little premature. You proved that there are still too many people around who are determined to stand in our way. We have to deal with that, and we are. We will address this some day with your help. You will help us; you can be sure of that. That's inevitable."

Antonio became more and more excited in his despicable high-minded ravings, and his terrible demands for social destruction. He became outright arrogant. He said that whoever joins the cause of the Empire gets access to everything he needs. That's why failures are not tolerated. "If you need suicide bombers, five, ten, fifty, maybe more, that not a problem. We can supply those from the Islamic hiring halls or cultivate them ourselves. All that we need to do is kill their families in the name of America. That will get them mad. They'll do anything for revenge, then. They will line up at our door offering their services. Many will readily choose to die to kill an enemy, since they believe that Allah will reward them forever after. That's why we promote religious or ideological irrationalities all over the world. I'm certain that you have those kinds of elements within your own nation that will gladly destroy your own cities for ideological goals."

Antonio's comment was that everything and everyone could be bought with money and with threats, or with beastly acts of savagery. "We will get all the logistical support and the security necessary that way, even for big operations in which your own people will destroy your own cities. Just wait and see."

I told him that he was mad.

He just laughed. He accused me of still living in the Middle Ages. "The world has changed," he said. "If we want wars, we create our own provocation. In the olden days we had to incite other countries to attack America in order to provoke America into war. That's what the attack on Pearl Harbor was all about. We had to get the Japanese to provoke you. We will soon have the capability to 'inspire' rogue elements of your own military and other institutions to carry out the provocation themselves, like attacking your own country with the goal to provoke you into war. So you see, very soon we won't need anyone to attack the mighty USA from the outside. Your own people will do this for us from within and call their acts terrorism. That's how things are done in the real world. If we want America to destroy the Middle East, or Africa, or Russia with nuclear weapons, we'll simply will 'inspire' your own people to blow up one of your own cities. In the process of doing that, they will lay a trail that leads to the Middle East, or to Africa, or Russia, which thereby becomes the targets for the 'retaliatory' war. We can direct this war into any direction we want, and it won't cost us a penny. So you see, our own people have created within your own country the capability to provide the necessary pretexts for blowing up the world. That's how you create wars on demand. It's that easy.

"Self-provocation is an excellent tool to achieve that with," he said moments later. "Also, it's relatively safe, because the public will never believe that such a treachery is possible. It is extremely difficult for people to comprehend the nature of a government's covert operation, and almost impossible for the gullible public to imagine that these covert governmental operations would be carried out against their own populations by rogue elements that are lavishly financed with the country's own tax dollars. It is also difficult for people to believe that these groups already exist and operate fully outside of the framework of the official system and its law. Those are the kinds of people that work for us, for the Fondi Empire and always have, just as I and we all do."

Antonio said at this point that he wouldn't be at all surprised if their next project would involve something really big, bigger than hitting Baltimore, like taking out a large city with a large nuclear weapon. "A nation like yours with a strong moral history is not so easily provoked into a big, destructive, global war," he said and grinned. "But that's the kind of war that the empire needs at this point to get the ball rolling, especially during emergency situations when its financial system is in danger of collapsing. In this case it might require something as big as a big nuclear blast over New York with the TV and movie cameras rolling."

He said that such a covert act is really quite easy to pull off. "With the right inside support from key government people we have the world's biggest nuclear arsenal at our disposal. Once we have procured the bomb, or bombs, it's easy to load them onto a private airplane at one of the many private airstrips. Then, bingo!"

Antonio said, that when this happens, nobody would ever know where the bomb came from. There will be cries about terrorism. People's rage over the carnage will most likely unleash a nuclear Armageddon in certain areas of the world that could also become very big. "And if blowing up one city isn't enough of a provocation, it might become necessary to take out two or three. Eventually this kind of escalating provocation will work. It has worked in the past during World War II."

Antonio suggested that it would be advantageous for me to be on their side. He said that great diplomatic efforts would be needed to prevent counterattacks against the USA for as long as the USA remained useful for the fondi's plans. He also said that by me being on their side, by me helping them with that, I would most likely remain alive myself throughout the whole nightmare, and become a part of the after-world. He told me to keep this in mind.

He laughed after that. This was the first time that he laughed throughout the entire ordeal. He said that they had set up a Malaysian monkey trap for me. "You may be thinking that you shouldn't have come here," he said, "but you came. Now you are recruited, whether you like it or not. Evidently you are fully aware that you now know too much. You are aware that you can't dare to let go of your fears because you don't know how we would react if you did something stupid."

Antonio stood up at this point and said that I would be contacted again when I was needed. He warned me, however, that to refuse them was no longer an option. He told me that I had been recruited, and that I had accepted my recruitment by listening to them. He said that the only real choice that I had now, was the choice between wanting to live or die. He told me that I would be contacted again as required, either by my executioner or by my new boss. Which of the two it would be, would be determined by my own behavior until then. He said that the choice was mine, and he cautioned me to act wisely from now on.

With all this having been said, the three men left. The man whom I met first, Mr. Palmerston, pointed out to me while he was likewise standing up to leave that I would remember this evening in shame. "From the inside, working with us, you have control to shape events to some degree," he said, "but working on the outside, you are impotent and will most likely die. Your shame lies in not responding to me before this offer closes. When this closure will be, nobody knows. I will contact you once I have determined how I will utilize you for our best 'mutual' advantage. The option for you not to be involved, truly no longer exists. You must understand this. Nobody whom we contact is ever, NOT involved. Don't forget this!"

He reached out his hand for a handshake.

I reached out likewise, but immediately pulled my hand back. An image flashed before my mind, of Fred scolding me on Ross' balcony before we left. Fred had said that he had expected more of a fight from me, more "fire!"

"I want to make one point quite clear to you," I said to Palmerston. "You didn't make an attractive offer to me that I can readily accept. In fact, you made no offer at all that is worth considering. Your empire has nothing to offer. Sure, your empire has enormous power, but to what end? Hitler had amassed great power, too. Hitler had launched his war with the greatest military power ever assembled on the face of the planet, but it gained him nothing. He staged a rampage in which a hundred million people were destroyed, and then he killed himself. That's all he ever accomplished. Your world-empire obviously has far more power than he could have ever hoped for. You most certainly have the power to destroy the entire world, and you may indeed do this, but I must ask again, to what end? You may very well win your war against the world that you are boasting about, but it would gain you nothing. When the dust settles, you would find yourself to be nothing more than the lone ruler of a burnt out rock. What an empty victory that would be! You'd win no victory! So, why would I join a loosing proposition?

"You further propose that you'd give me a position of power to help change history, but your proposal is made of empty words. What do you really have to offer? Do you offer me a place in one of your secret societies? You seem to have many of those, some with terrifying names. But what could they offer that would be worth my time? The very reason why you keep them secret suggests to me that these societies would disintegrate if they were exposed to the truth. Only people that are empty inside as human beings can be lured into these cozy little secret traps. Those secret societies, in which no one is challenging the fondi, of course give the 'inmates' some status that makes them feel good. However, when they're faced with the truth, their facade becomes paper-thin and crumbles. So why would I want to join any one of your precious secret societies of empty heads, even the more public ones? And even if you were to offer me a seat on your innermost council, what good would this do? I would merely be joining a whole fraternity of empty heads, who are all members of various empty head societies according to their individual liking. So, why would I want to be a part of that?

"Indeed, why would I want to join the Empire at all, if the only power you have is to kill and destroy? Is this worth something to devote one's life to? There exists not a single universal principle that supports your Empire. All the boasts that you made are empty boasts, built on lies and dreams and mythologies, and of course terror. But you don't have it within you to create one iota of good that uplifts civilization. By this lack all your boasts ring empty, and your Empire appears to be as surely doomed as any self-condemned person is."

I paused.

"So you come here and ask me to join you," I added moments later. "You ask me to hitch my wagon to your lies and dreams and mythologies, and to join you on your fast-track ride to hell. What a ridiculous offer is this?"

I paused again.

"You tell me that you offer me the world," I continued, "but I see nothing in that future that would enables me to look into mirror each night before going to bed and say to myself that it has been a worthwhile day for me to have lived. You've got nothing like that to offer. Nor can you say such a thing honestly to yourself, perhaps not even once, much less every night. The only thing that you have truly offered me, is death, if I don't play ball with you. Truly this is all that you have within your power to bestow. Don't you see how small you are and how little you bring to the table? If you want me to consider joining your club, you will have to do much better than that on all counts, but you can't, because you're bankrupt. However, let's turn the table around. Allow me to invite you to join a rich team, our team, and let me offer you the chance to become a human being. No vertical power structure has ever existed for long. Even Rome fell. But the idea of Love-Based Economics has ruled in the background throughout all time, reflecting the Principle of Universal Love. Humanity is the winning team. I am offering you a chance to join the winning team."

I reached my hand out to him as he did earlier, for a handshake, but there was no response from him, not the slightest motion. The man simply walked away without a reply or even an attempt to insult or threaten me further. He merely walked away. However, he turned back after he had taken a few steps towards the nearest side street. He stopped. "You forgot to mention the coming Ice Age," he said in a calm manner. "The Ice Age proves everything."

"It proves nothing," I replied.

"It proves that you are impotent," said Palmerston. "The Ice Age is coming soon. It comes with a cold spell that civilization and nine-tenth of mankind will not survive, because we won't let the necessary development happen. If we were to allow civilization to survive, then the Fondi Empire wouldn't survive. But we will survive, and we will survive in the Ice Age World as in the olden days with a few million people for us to rule over. The Ice Age World will become a nice, small, feudal world that we will rule over for a hundred millennia."

"You are not just arrogant but also stupid when you are dreaming that this will work." I countered him.

Palmerston just laughed. "Who would stop us? You are the dreamer when you think that anything can stop us, especially you. As I said, the proof lies in the Ice Age. We are in an Ice Age World already," he said. "The transition may have begun or is near. Now look around you. We have successfully blinded the whole world to that fact. At the present time it would still be possible for humanity to rescue itself by creating large-scale projects for indoor agriculture, with which to assure its food supply in an Ice Age world. It would take a hundred years to build the infrastructures, should you decide to build them. I am certain those vast infrastructures could be built if we were to allow that. Humanity is extremely resourceful, but we won't allow it to happen, will we? As I told you, our policies aren't primarily about money. We own all the money. The key policy is the survival of the Empire. Nor are the steps towards that goal focused on power. We have all the power that matters to us. The prime policy-imperative is the survival of the system of empire, the survival of our elite 'civilization,' the imperial 'civilization.' An imperial 'civilization' cannot survive in a highly developed humanist renaissance civilization. That is why an Ice Age Renaissance will never be allowed, even if this denial leads to the death of nine-tenth of mankind. Of course, as you know, the Ice Age Renaissance is not even on the agenda, or close to it, or ever will be. It simply isn't on anybody's mind. It will remain that way." He laughed as he said this.

"If this renaissance is needed, it will happen," I answered him.

Palmerston laughed again. "You are so naive, you would make a great comedian. Just answer me this: Who in the world is even talking about an Ice Age? No one is! We've put them all asleep dreaming about global warming. Mankind is living in an Ice Age World right now. In order to survive it would need to respond to the Ice-Age-imposed schedule now, and I do mean right now. Mankind would have to be actively engaged right now in creating the technologies and building the industries for creating the infrastructures. That should have already been started. But it hasn't even be talked about yet, has it? Do you see any evidence of anyone even wanting to create an Ice Age Renaissance in order to save 99% of humanity from starvation 100 years from now? There is nothing happening on this front, because we haven't allowed it. We've promoted deindustrialization instead. We also promoted the idea of global warming. With society being tied into knots over global warming, it won't be looking at the approaching Ice Age. Everybody is talking about the postindustrial utopia of narrow-minded poverty, because we've promoted it. We created that greenhouse gas global warming fantasy in order to get your idiots to destroy your own industries to comply with it. It will cost America ten times the original cost to recreate the industries that are being destroyed right now at our bidding. America is on the fast train going backwards. When your people have fully complied with our demands and destroyed all your industries, then we'll quietly announce that global warming was after all just a sad mistake, oops! Of course you'll never get your industries back. You'll launch into massive crash-programs out of sheer desperation, and we'll watch you wreck yourself in the process of trying. That's how the Soviet Union is presently wrecking its economy and killing its population on that mad notion of creating the SDI system on their own, as we have suggested they should."

I just shook my head in disbelief.

"Ah, I think I got you!" said Palmerston. "We've got your whole country. You can't get your industries back to create an Ice Age Renaissance, because an economy is a living thing. It's like a people growing up. You can't stamp it out of the ground. It has to be nurtured to grow, and every step has to be built on the one before. You have to start with education, science, technology, research, and then tooling and building up industries for tooling. But you don't have any of that anymore. We destroyed it with your own money, pitting it against you. Everything was measured against money as prescribed by your god Adam Smith, the architect of Greed-Based Fascism. With that you destroyed your existence. You imported cheaply and dynamited your own production facilities that couldn't compete with slave labor production."

"I agree, Adam Smith was the best servant you ever had, better than Wells and Russell combined, the ideological architects of the atomic bomb." I countered the man. "Adam Smith studied the fall of Rome as he was commissioned, and with it he gave Shelburne a more potent weapon that he could have hoped for, a weapon built on the process that destroyed Rome, the process of Greed-Based Fascism. Shelburne used it against America. But we are not so utterly stupid that we will stick with it forever. Ultimately your plan won't succeed."

Palmerston just laughed. "It's succeeding already. It took a long time to get going, but it's working fine now. Of course it won't work forever. But what does that matter, once we've got you past the point of no return with the coming Ice Age standing at your door and you find yourself too poor to protect your existence, it will be curtains for you. That's how we'll win. Ultimately you will likely wake up and try to stop our plan. That might happen, and you might even be victorious over our plan, but before this happens, we'll have already won. Until then, we simply make sure that everybody remains tied into knots over global warming, and keeps their heads bowed to Adam Smith with their sledge hammers in hand wrecking their industries, and not just in America. Industries are bad. Didn't you know that? They use energy and produce greenhouse gases. Even farming is bad. It is tearing up the land, releasing pollutants. We have even vilified the world's best pesticide and refrigerant, because they enable too many people to live. Heck, we even vilified mankind itself as a cancer on the Earth, and people believe us. Everybody is talking about global warming as we have bid them to do, with which we created a campaign against all of these 'villains.' And why shouldn't people be talking about global warming? Global warming is real. We are coming out of a Little Ice Age and have been warming up from that for over 200 years." He laughed some more. "Every March we have global warming till September, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. So you see, everybody is singing our global warming tune. We bought them enough reasons from the scientists we own, to sing those songs."

"That can all change tomorrow," I interrupted him. "We can change that."

"Don't make me laugh," said Palmerston. And he did laugh some more, even louder than before. "Just stand at any street corner and announce the need for an Ice Age Renaissance. People will laugh at you, ridicule you, they'll spit at you. The only way you would survive such an ordeal would be by wearing a clown's suite. There isn't a politician in the world that would touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. Politicians want to be elected. They have no choice but to respond to our Global Warming Dogma and promise their electors that they will make all the cuts 'necessary' to keep that 'dangerous' global warming under wraps. There isn't a politician out there who isn't singing our song, no matter what he or she may think privately. They sing the song the public is taught to expect. We've covered all the bases. I can assure you we have. I just can't understand why you are fighting us. We are offing you the greatest opportunity in your life to get in on the ground floor with the greatest World Empire ever envisioned that will make Rome appear like something puny."

"You just answered your own question," I interrupted him. "The empire of Rome was a recipe for disaster, and disaster happened. Rome collapsed."

"You are really funny," Palmerston replied and laughed again. "Maybe we should recruit you as a comedian. Rome wasn't a disaster. It was the greatest orgy of power the world has ever seen. It lasted for half a millennium. Rome is our model. What Rome achieved, we'll supercede, and we'll do it globally. Rome created impotence and poverty in all the regions round about. That gave it its power to subdue the whole world as it was then. We will do the same, and no one can stop us. Our goal isn't universal economic development around the planet as the humanists dream of. That's the recipe for disaster for any empire. Empires can only be maintained in a world that has become a vast sea of poverty and impotence. And that's not hard to create. That will be your future too, personally if you don't join us. Take a careful look at the world, Peter. Everything that you see today will be gone in 20 years."

I simply shook my head and smiled.

"Look at Germany, Peter. Germany is the richest country in Europe right now and the biggest employer that Europe has ever seen. Germany has attracted guest workers from all over Europe. Nobody can yet imagine that this economic powerhouse will soon be the world-center of unemployment. That's the world that you will see in 20 years time. Our projection is that Germany will have 10 to 20 million unemployed in two decades, with unemployment rates ranging upwards to 30% in some regions, and more so in the industrial sector. That is how you create poverty, Peter. It's easily done under the mantle of Adam Smith, the god of greed."

I raised my hand to stop him. "You mean the god of greed-based fascism," I interjected. "Adam can be dethroned. What you say will never be happening," I protested.

Palmerston just laughed. "It's already happening, Peter. Just look at your own country. The once mightiest economy in the world is already crumbling. Where is your textile industry? It's gone. Where is your steel industry? It is fast becoming a vanishing breed. Then look at your farming sector. Farming is fast becoming too expensive to maintain. And that's just the beginning. Can you imagine America with its railways gone, its airlines killed, its industrial sector eliminated, its machine tool industry largely wiped out, its auto industry gone, its aircraft industry gone? What you cannot image today will be the face of America in twenty years, or thirty at very latest. It's so easily done. It is done with religious zeal. You are up to your armpits in a new religious war, and you are so naïve that you don't even recognize that the war is in progress and is killing you. We gave America its new god, Adam Smith, the man who is honored in America as the inventor of modern economics. Greed-based fascism, the poison dart, is what we gave you. You are totally right, it shouldn't be called economics what Adam Smith cooked up, because it isn't. It wasn't meant to be. Greed-based fascism is utterly destructive. It was meant to be that. We offered you Adam Smith as a Trojan Horse and you took it in and made it into a god. You are so naïve in America, Peter, that in the name of your god of greed you are dynamiting your own steel mills, simply because you can buy steel cheaper from Asia. In the name of the same god, Germany, Europe, all the big industrialized nation will soon be dismantling all their industries and ship them off the China, India, Japan, Mexico, Africa, or wherever deep poverty already exists that causes people to work like slaves, or for far less, almost for free."

"That will never happen," I protested.

"It is already happening, Peter. We have already achieved a lot of that. Just open your eyes man, are already operating the biggest slavery operations in history. It just isn't called that anymore. It's called globalism. Globalism is the white blanket under which the dirtiest operations can be hidden, and be given a noble face."

I raised my hand to stop him.

"No Peter, let me finish!" he waved me off. "You need to understand how deeply we are already in control of mankind. Our slavery has become the strongest force in the world. We employ 250 million children worldwide. We don't employ them directly of course, but it is done under our control. That all by itself makes the old slave trading days of the colonial period appear puny by comparison. In addition, we have an endless labor pool in India and China that we can tap into for slaves galore. Seventy percent of all people in India and China live in absolute poverty. In the olden days the slave-traders has to raid the forests of Africa for slaves, which they then shipped by the tens of thousands to the Empire's colonies. That kind of brutality is no longer necessary. India and China now apply to us, literally begging us to enslave their people for a few pennies of royalty. How can you even hope to stop that? The world applauds this new kind of slavery. Society thinks we are doing these countries and their people a favor. They say we are giving those poor people a job."

"Yes a few people believe that, but I don't," I cut Palmerston off. "You don't believe that crap yourself. The only reason why India and China, and Mexico too, can offer you cheap labor is, because they have no infrastructures to support with the price of their product. We in America and the people in Germany, and so forth, have a large array of infrastructures to support that have become a part of civilized living. It is impossible to create an efficient and highly developed industrial society with decent standard of living without those infrastructures, like schools, higher education, universal health care, advanced medical facilities, cultural facilities, research institutions, clean housing, efficient transportation, water supply infrastructures, power supply infrastructures, highways, canals, airports, shipping facilities, but also income assurance, such as pensions and so forth. All of these are costly infrastructures that are part of our modern civilization. They must be paid for with the price of the product that a nation is producing for itself. The reason why you get cheap slave labor from China is simple, because the infrastructures that define a decent standard of living don't exist there and will never exist there, because the product is priced so cheaply that the necessary infrastructures can never be created."

"Our goal isn't to maintain the society of China or India or Africa," Palmerston interrupted. "Our goal is to maintain the Empire."

"So you feel justified to use Hitler's method, who forced millions into his slave labor camps where he worked them to death and then discarded the residue. You are doing the same with the people in China and all the other countries were poverty reigns?"

"China has 700 million living in poverty. So what? We are only using up a few hundred million, Peter. China has am overpopulation problem. We are helping China. Can you imagine if China had Western-style infrastructures, the country would be overrun with people. We make sure that this will never happen by draining China's human resources so that the country cannot be developed. We slowed everything down to a snail's pace."

"This means that you have become the biggest murderer in history," I interjected.

"That's not the point, Peter. The Empire has always been the biggest murderer in the world. That's needed to keep the population nicely in poverty and keep it from getting too big. You understand that the bigger the world population gets, the more it requires advanced technological infrastructures to support itself. In this kind of an environment the humanist scientific advances will far outstrip the Empire's ability to contain mankind. When this happens, feudalism will no longer be tolerated, or empires for that matter. It will be curtains for us. If we hadn't intervened with our mass-slavery, China would have reached this renaissance stage already. It would have reached across Asia and uplifted Europe, and America would be a partner with them in rescuing Africa. If we had allowed this to happen, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with you. The fondi would be forgotten history instead of being King of the World."

"You monster, how can you even think that I would be joining an empire that has become the biggest murderer of human beings in all history?"

"You will join us, because you really have no choice," said Palmerston and stood up and walked away. "But don't blame us alone," he added. "We gave the Indians and the Chinese our Trojan Horse too. We gave them Adam Smith, and they opened their country and gave us their people. With such a huge slavery-force we can wreck the world, whether you like it or not."

"What you are saying is monstrous," I interrupted him, protesting while he was casually walking away. "You are killing people with that!" I shouted after him.

He stopped at the corner of a narrow alleyway. "Yes, Peter, people are going to die in the process. Poverty is the most vicious killer there is. We merely accelerate the process a bit. That's just the point. In fact we intend to kill people by the hundreds of millions in this fashion. That's the plan. It's no secret that we are aiming to depopulate the world down to the two-billion level. And we will do it with poverty. That's more efficient even than doing it with nukes. Depopulation is necessary and always has been for maintaining a feudal kind of platform, which happens to be the most successful platform that ever existed for an empire enslaving mankind."

"You are totally nuts," I relied. "What about your damn nukes then? Your own nukes will haunt you. Three missiles can take out your home ground."

"Oh you naïve little boy!" said Palmerston and disappeared in the alley.

To my great surprise I wasn't glad to see him go. I was disappointed. I was just getting into the mood of fighting. I had a few words to say about those nukes.

It turned out that I did have my chance after all. Palmerston came back. "I'm not finished with you yet," he said and sat down again. "I want you to understand something about disarmament. One we've taken over the Soviet Empire, piece by piece, we'll force disarmament on Russia. We will set the pace. America will pioneer nuclear disarmament, which simply means taking some of their older systems out of service and putting the most useful parts on the shelf. Russia will be forced to follow suite, but they will be forced to destroy what they take out. While all this disarmament is happing, we have a whole new approach in progress. Our friends in America, that we already own, will make America become the world's pioneer in subcritical testing, officially under the Nuclear Weapons Stewardship program that will be said to be required to maintain America's nuclear inventory. However, that advanced approach gives them the capability to produce new designs without the need for full-scale testing, a whole new range of ultramodern miniature nukes, the kind that I mentioned earlier. The planned new pit-production facility will be able to give us a thousand new nukes a year. Under this plan, while the world is disarming, we will be building our capability up. In time we will reach the goal that Bertrand Russell, the greatest pacifist in history, has set for us. He foresaw a world with one single global imperial government in control that is the sole owner of the nuclear bomb. In two or three decades his dream will become reality. There will be no more wars then. When this becomes reality no one in the world will fail to yield to the terror of the nuclear threat. If any nation dares to sour our soup, it will simply be knocked off the chessboard of the world. A few nations are already being set up to be made an example of, for the rest of mankind. Russell's plan was brilliant, Peter. The man was a genius. He should have been given the Nobel Price. So, don't worry about nuclear war. It won't happen. The Empire will make sure that nuclear war doesn't happen, because the mini-nuke program is far more efficient. That's why I am certain that you will join us. Think of us as a peace maintenance organization. Think of us as the stewards of mankind."

"America will never stoop so low to become a part of that?" I interrupted. "However, it looks to me that America is a key element in you plan. If America were to sour your soup, you'd have nothing, nothing to threaten the world with."

Palmerston just laughed. "Who will sour our soup? That might have been possible a few decades ago. Now America is too deeply corrupted with greed. The opposite will soon be happening. America will soon be killing its own people on our command. They will dynamite their own hospitals just as they have dynamited their steel industry. Healthcare will become so expensive that only the rich can afford it. Housing has already become so expensive that millions are forced to be living on the streets. America is even blowing up its dollar for us. With its economy disintegrating and its banks becoming the biggest casinos in history, the American dollar is set up to become worthless overnight when the first major tremors hit the gambling floors. Then America will be the first in line to demand the creation of a world-currency, which we of course will own as we already own most of the world's currencies through our networks of private central banks. Who else will own the new world-currency but us? Do you expect America to own it, or Germany? They don't even own their own currency. We own their currencies. With a single world-currency under our control, it will be easy for us to kill four billion people with poverty. Just give us the means, and we'll do it. As owners of the New World Bank we will control the credit for the nations. We determine who lives and under what terms, or dies."

"You are getting more and more insane in your dreaming," I interrupted Palmerston and began to laugh.

"Insane?" he said, and laughed back at me. "Where were you in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was said that the Earth has cancer and that cancer is man. We made the whole world believe that. Out of it came the biggest deindustrialization effort in history, in the West. We laid this egg in the minds of society to clear the path for our slavery imports. Industries were said to be evil polluters, so we got rid of them. Nobody cared about the unemployed since we made everybody believe that there are far too many people in the world. In fact, nobody cares about the unemployed now, and the homeless. We encourage this careless living."

"That's going to backfire on you," It protested. "The more misery you create, the more diseases you will create in the weakened population. Have you forgotten what happened in 1345 when the big financial collapse brought down the economies and consequently weakened the populations? Two years later the Black Plaque broke out. It wiped out half the population of Europe."

"We haven't forgotten that Peter. We understand the process. That's how we intend to reduce the world population by four billion. If we can choke off the economic lifeline the rest is easy. It happens on its own."

"You are nuts, that will never happen!" I repeated my protest. "You are inviting me to join a dream-world."

"Dream world?" Palmerston repeated. "Open your eyes, Peter. It's already happening. Look at Europe and the Euro-pact. The Maastricht Euro-pact is by design a self-strangulation agreement that all the nations of Europe signed up to, except England, since we, who authored the pact, quietly advised them against it. Obviously, we wanted to keep our home base from collapsing. That's why all the Euro-pact countries are doomed to collapse. We strangle them and forbid them the financial credits that are needed to rebuild their world. In twenty years all of Europe will be broke. Can you imagine Germany with ten million unemployed? Can you imagine Germany with its industries collapsing, its banks collapsing, its entrepreneurial mittelstand collapsing? You will see government after government collapsing as the country becomes ungovernable. And you will see the governments becoming evermore fascist in nature. All of that is unavoidable, because the Euro-Pact nations have committed themselves to no longer invest into their own self-development. With a single world-currency under our control, the whole world can be similarly strangled. Mark my word. It will be strangled. No one can escape the fate we provide. I'm offering you the option to be on the winning side. I am telling you this openly without reservations, because we are invincible. There is simply nothing in the world that's big enough to stop us. Certainly not tiny little you."

"Don't be so sure of yourself," I interjected, cutting him off. "America can stop you."

"Don't make me laugh, Peter. America is a fool. They've subjected themselves to self-strangulation by bowing to us. They've put themselves into chains voluntarily, just like Europe did. America started the self-strangulation in 1875 with the Specie Resumption Act that limited America's financial credits to the availability of gold. And later America took another step in that direction, a much worse step. That happened in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act that put the nation's financial credits into the private hands of the Fondi-Empire. With this Act of Congress the American people literally put themselves into chains and gave the reign to us. It's impossible for a nation to be more foolish than America has been. They chopped off their feet to win the race."

"Maybe you are the fool, Mr. Palmerston," I countered him. "Japan once spoke like you speak now. One of its admirals warned however, not to underestimate America. He called it a sleeping giant."

"I know that, Peter. I'm not stupid. The man who said this was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Empire of Japan. That was said that on famous day of December 7th, 1941, when the attack of Pearl Harbor began. The admiral said, "I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." But those days are gone, Peter. That sleeping giant as been put to sleep permanently. From the day that Franklin Roosevelt was put into the grave, all memories of those days have been erased. America became the champion of doom. We stole its soul. It became the world-advocate that the Earth has cancer and that this cancer is man. The America that you spoke of, that was a sleeping giant, no longer exists. America is dead as a giant. Everything that Roosevelt stood for, the Four Freedoms, the New Deal, the General Welfare Principle, unlimited economic development, protected industries, guaranteed access to higher education, universal healthcare, and social protection. It's all bee trashed and vilified and been replaced with nuclear bombs. I predict that of what still remains of Roosevelt's legacy, like the numerous federal facilities in support of the states and of general welfare, will be gone in twenty years. America has become a murdered giant that will never rise again. We made sure of that. But there is one other."

"Another what?"

He hesitated. "Perhaps I shouldn't tell you."

"You mean another weak flank? There will always be another weak flank."

"But you don't know what that is, do you? There is only one thing that can stop us, and you are too dumb to recognize it. You wouldn't see it if I held it before your nose. In fact it has always been right in front of you. It's bigger than America. It's a global flank. It's so big that you can't see the forest for all the trees."

"Oh, I can think of such a flank alright, a global flank, the one flank where you are totally exposed, which you cannot cover over and hide," I said to Palmerston. "The Principle of Universal Love is that flank, and the Principle of the Universal Brotherhood of All Mankind, and the great renaissance principle of 1648, the Principle of the Advantage of the Other. Our whole nation was built on those principles. They became combined into the General Welfare Principle. Our nation was not built on the foundation of greed, or power, but on something far greater, something that made it superior to all the imperial powers in the world. It was built on a principle. It was built on the General Welfare Principle. That is why Shelburne couldn't defeat America, either with arms or with free trade, and why Lord Palmerston after him failed in the same manner. Is that why you chose to call yourself by his name? In all the historic attacks that you launched against America, America was saved by its principles. And that's your Achilles' Heel. What your fondi empire had tried to defeat repeatedly and never could, will defeat you."

"Don't make me laugh," said Palmerston, interrupting me. "Your precious principles are dead, never to rise again. People will laugh at you when you bring these principles up as solution for anything. We killed the luster of those principles eons ago. We slandered the General Welfare Principle like some evil demon that we blamed the depression on. Your 1648 Peace of Westphalia Principle means nothing to anyone. When you talk about the Principle of the Advantage of the Other as a basis for civilization, people will call you a crackpot. We turned those principles into dust, together with the General Welfare Principle. People will call you a dreamer when you talk about universal love as a principle. That certainly isn't our weak flank anymore. We've dealt with that."

"You seem to suggest the existence of one other flank that you are vulnerable on," I said, "where a turnaround can happen that can break all of our carefully laid eggs."

"Oh, but you don't know what that flank is," said Palmerston. "Of course, I'm not going to tell you what it is, nor will you ever figure it out yourself since you are too stupid to recognize it in a million years."

"Why do you insist on insulting me like that?" I cut him off. "Your weak flank isn't that hidden that it shouldn't be obvious to everybody, and it is big, I agree. In fact it is so big that it will crack all your little eggs that you have laid, one by one, just as every lie is doomed to fall apart in the face of the naked truth. And the naked truth is that your Fondi Empire is empty. Take away the big lies, and there nothing there. There's no humanity to be seen, no beauty, compassion, culture, riches in living, love, brotherhood, creativity. There is nothing there that identifies you as human. There is only a big void, the emptiness of greed and fascist force that lack the power to protect you from the coming Ice Age and the corresponding awakening of mankind. The return of the Ice Age is your weak flank. You can fool the whole world with your dreams of global warming by hiding the fact that we've been warming up from the last Little Ice Age for the past 300 years. But from the moment when the global cooling begins towards the next Ice Age transition, your lies will evaporate that you are hiding behind."

Palmerston reacted with evident anger, momentarily, but being the great expert in the craft of deception that he was, he regained his composure and smiled.

"It doesn't then matter how many lies you invent the explain the global cooling away, mankind will wake up and recognize that it must protect the global agriculture from the coming deep freeze by creating indoor agriculture facilities or it will die. The people in the world will then ask themselves, what must be done to achieve that? What steps are necessary to create those infrastructures that enable mankind to survive? When this happens society will awake globally and walk all over you and your precious eggs that you have laid and crush them. That is how mankind will rescue itself. And there is nothing you can do to stop that, unless you can stop the Ice Age from returning as it has returned periodically for the last two million years. You can't get around the fact that for 87% of the last two million years the Earth has been under Ice Age conditions, which will likely resume in 100 to 150 years. When this starts, your empires ends; all of it. The great fondi empire will be reduced to just another entry in the annals of history as just another example of utter foolishness."

"Don't hold your breath," Palmerston replied. "The return of the Ice Age is too near for mankind to react in time. "By the time society awakens to reality it will be too late to begin building the infrastructures. We'll have the trap sprung. Our empire won't be gone. It will survive forever. With mankind shrinking back to a 100-million world population that is kept small by poverty, the conditions are perfect for a feudal empire to be maintained indefinitely. That is what you will see happening, and there is nothing you can do to change that. So why not join the ruling class?"

"You are dreaming Mr. Palmerston. Your dream will never come true. Even if you are successful in keeping mankind asleep until it is too late to respond to the Ice Age cooling with indoor agriculture, your precious feudal empire will never materialize either. Once the Ice Age cooling starts and agriculture becomes devastated so that the mass-starvation and dying begins, the game is over for all of mankind. In 1345 the European banking collapse had so weakened the population, that two years later the Black Death plaque took hold and spread like wildfire, killing half the population. Then in 1918, in the shadow of the economic devastation of World War I, a new flu strain erupted that spread around the whole Northern Hemisphere. In the space of a few months this single strain of flu killed several times as many people than the entire war had. Then in the mid-1970s the depopulation of Africa was put in the agenda, by means of poverty. Out of this weakened background AIDS erupted that will proliferate and kill people for decades to come. If the biological weakening of a population can have such a devastating effect in the relatively small backgrounds, can you imagine what the biological collapse of ten billion people can unleash? Most likely, by the time the dust settles, not a single person will remain alive, including the masters of your Fondi Empire. Your only hope for survival rests with the universal survival of mankind. If you peel all the lies away that you tell yourself, and wrap yourself up with, you'll come to the bottom line as I have told you."

Palmerston didn't protest this time. I finally gained the momentum to make an impression. A voice within urged me to keep up the momentum and rescue the man from his folly.

"The nakedness that results when your lies are peeled away isn't pretty," I said to Palmerston. "There is nothing there but a sham that arouses pity. Also those countless layers of conspiracies that you talked about are not really under your control. Sure, a lot of ugly things are happening all over the world, and they may all seem as if they were guided by a single hand. But really, Mr. Palmerston, conspiracies on such a wide and nearly universal scale don't happen. What you regard as controlled conspiracies held in your hand are probably nothing more than a bunch of self-similar happening arising from the spreading insanity that you have inspired around the world, because insanity breeds more insanity. If you take away the illusions of greatness that you labor under, your world empire may in reality be rather small, unimpressive and impotent. Under those circumstances, why would I want to join you?"

"You will join us, because I left you with no other option," Palmerston replied. "We are in control. We have the mini-nukes. We have all the power."

"You have nothing," I countered him. "Your mini-nukes will fail as all your previous options have failed. Without having the universal love of humanity on your side, you have nothing, no power! Your nukes will fail to achieve your objective."

"In this case you'd be well advised to join us to make sure that they won't fail," said Palmerston, "because the backup plan is large-scale biological warfare. That prospect scares even me, Peter."

"No, I have another option open to me," I said to Palmerston. "I have a far greater option than the one you may dream of. You have nothing in your armor that would hide you from that. But I can't tell you what it is. You probably wouldn't understand." With that I reached my hand out for a handshake.

"You are treading dangerous waters my friend," said Palmerston, refusing the handshake. "My advise to you is to watch your back and to hope that the next man that comes to meet you will be your boss and friend, bidding you welcome into our fold, instead of being your executioner."

I just laughed. "If you execute me, you execute yourself. You know this perfectly well, and I know it. Your plan, if I don't stop it, leads to your death. You don't want this to happen, do you? This means that you need me, perhaps not in the way you think. But you need me to keep you alive in spite of your folly, by keeping humanity alive."

Palmerston's face became hard as he stood up once more to leave.

I reached my hand out once more for a handshake.

He made a gesture, reaching towards it, but then quickly pulled it back. "The days are over when one has to resort to war to destroy a country. We will get America to destroy itself from within," he said. "We will destroy it together with Europe. We'll get America to drain its own economic resources if need be. We'll get America to start wars if need be. There will be wars that nobody can win. There will be wars that drag on for decades and keep on dragging America down. Just look at Israel. That's how we destroyed Israel already. We lend them money to build Jewish settlements all over Palestine to cause tensions. That caused enormous tensions. The policy of tension is wonderfully destructive. The Middle East could be a paradise with Israel being the economic powerhouse behind it. And it would be if we hadn't intervened. Instead, Israel has been drained and its name been made synonymous with the devil all across the world."

"Haven't you been listening to what I've bee saying?" I interjected. "If you destroy America you destroy your last chance to have a future. Of course if America gains itself the freedom to survive, your empire won't survive. However, you and your children will survive. This means that you need me, Mr. Palmerston. You need me and us all, especially America to save the world for you. The bottom line is, you are bankrupt Mr. Palmerston. You are bankrupt beyond recourse. You are naked behind your facade. You have no power, not even the power to create the condition under which you can survive. Do you remember Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the Emperor's New Clothes? A few clever scoundrels convinced everyone that they could weave a fabric of such exquisite beauty that only a competent person would recognize it. So, they labored day and night on their empty looms, diligently producing cloth that everyone was taught to admire, and did admire, including the Emperor who marched in a parade proudly arrayed in new royal clothes that were tailored from the new fabric produced on the empty looms. The whole society sang the song that it was taught to sing, and so all admired the exquisite beauty of the Emperor new clothes that was made of cloth that never was. Then a child stood up and piped out with a laud and innocent voice, 'but he hasn't got anything on!' That child's naive honesty rekindled the people's honesty with themselves that day, by which the wonderful world of reality was reestablished and everybody had a good laugh at their own silliness."

I added, suggesting to Palmerston, that I might just be that naive child, as he had said so himself that I would qualify for. I told him that his empire was doomed, because it cannot defend itself against the truth. "The little child in Anderson's tale is the humanity of mankind, Mr. Palmerston. It is poised to hit you on all flanks, and none of your flanks is strong enough to withstand the truth that comes to light in our humanity that reflects the Principle of Universal Love. When hope dwindles for humanity love opens a new window. With love we will prevail. So let me invite you to protect your existence. The door is open for you to come and join us."

Palmerston responded by simply walking away. This time he did not stop or hesitate, or lock back as he did before. The street into which he disappeared looked as though it was made to measure for him. It was exceedingly narrow and dark, without a single light in it as far as I could tell. It appeared as dark as the path appeared that he and his men had laid out before me.

Unlike the men from the fondi, I didn't walk away into the dark. I remained where I was, still largely stunned, mentally petrified by what had transpired, and more so by my daring rejection of Palmerston's offer that I had thrown boldly back into his face. What I had done seemed utterly foolish all of a sudden. While Fred might be proud of me for having fought back, I couldn't feel that the fight had bought me any advantage. I felt scared. I sat down again and stared aimlessly into the dark of the sea, focusing on a tiny spot of light where the horizon and the island of Lido should be. I remained sitting there for twenty minutes and kept on staring at this tiny speck of light without coming to any conclusion as to how the proceed.

The man was right about one thing that he promised. He was right about the shame that I now felt. I felt ashamed for having come. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt ashamed also that I hadn't tried harder to educate him and his men about the Principle of Universal Love. The still greater daring that this would have involved might have created a brighter world for all of us, even for a man like Palmerston. With this I could have offered him a world far brighter than his fondest hopes and dreams of a world-empire offered. Oh, how I wished that I had Helen with me. On second thought, I realized that she might not have been able to help the man either.

I wondered if the Renaissance powers had felt the same way, that the Venetian Empire was a hopeless case in terms of awakening them to become human beings. I suddenly felt a great deal of compassion for the Renaissance people and their impotence that had caused them to make their historic mistake of turning the Venetian Empire into an enemy of mankind instead of uplifting it with the Renaissance spirit. I wondered if I had made the same mistake with the fondi.

On the way back to the hotel, walking through the empty streets again, crowded only by the ever-present pigeons, I felt a deep compassion for those 'boxed-in' people that had threatened my life that evening. They where already dead as human beings, as dead as they wish the whole world would be. Thomas Hobbes had killed them, as Antonio had pointed out without ever realizing what he had been saying. Indeed, it appeared that they had all drifted way beyond redemption. But what about humanity that follows so willingly in their tracks? Is humanity really beyond redemption? I found this hard to believe. And what about me? I had been deeply injured by this three-hour attack on our common humanity. I felt as if an icy fog had enveloped me and chilled me to the bone.

Yes, the man was right that the tectonic plates of the world had been shifting and would continue to shift, but should we not be able to alter their course? The fondi's tectonics were bringing up all the rotten dead people out from the deep of the bowels of the Earth, which were now rising up arrogantly to destroy civilization. Should we not be able to put them back to where they belong, buried in a history that should not be forgotten, but be hidden in shame, and bring forth all the principles of the great periods of renaissance that made mankind shine like stars in the heavens?

Something profound happened that night on the way home. It echoed that last thought. It unfolded like a small miracle that took away the chill of the icy fog that had crept into my soul.

As I came near the entrance to Piazza San Marco I heard a faint voice of someone singing. Indeed, someone was singing in front of the great cathedral. A Negro dressed in white was singing the old American hymn, ^Amazing Grace.^ He was singing in the still faint dawn of the morning for reasons I couldn't imagine as if he needed to practice for a performance and there was no studio in Venice to practice in. He sang the hymn beautifully. He sand it twice. Maybe he repeated it just for me as he saw me coming and might have realized that I needed to hear his song. Indeed, I needed its healing power. I stopped in the middle of Piazza San Marco and listened. I remained there until the man finished and walked away. As I walked away too, the last words kept echoing in my mind.

When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.

The tape recorder felt heavy in my pocket when I arrived back at the hotel. No one had been waiting up for me. I looked at my watch; it was almost four in the morning. We had to be out of the hotel by ten. Nothing had been packed yet. I ate the remaining pieces of chocolate that Palmerston had left behind and tried to sleep, but this seemed impossible. The man's predictions were already coming true. The dreadful darkness of the meeting was creeping into my soul again, fighting against the melody of Amazing Grace. I was almost ashamed for having been born to be locked into this struggle where so much darkness ruled. I was ashamed, because from this day forth I was forced by threat of death to become a part of this evil empire of darkness, or to crawl into a hole and play dead myself. I reasoned that I could join them in order to betray them, but this would become a betrayal of myself. But luckily, the song of Amazing Grace that I had heard on Piazza San Marco counterpoised the darkness more and more. I could still hear the uplifting melody and remembered the grace in the man's powerful singing and its message of peace.

When Palmerston walked away I had wished I had never come to this place! I had asked myself over and over: Was this the price I had to pay for what we have accomplished? Is this what happens at the leading edge? But the answer that came to me now in form of that hymn spoke of a victory that is worth the pain? Would I do it therefore again, coming to Venice to the conference, fighting for humanity and the continued existence of civilization? I suddenly knew with certainty that I would do everything the same.

Trying to fall asleep that night I made myself believe that I was certain I would repeat every step and every word if I had to do it all over, even knowing the consequences. I made myself believe that the consequences appeared more like a challenge than as a threat. And then, for a brief moment the thought came in a flash that the man from the fondi might have been trying to recruit me to join him in his own efforts to defeat the fondi from within that had become a liability to the oligarchy that he was rooted in. The thought was intriguing, but unlikely, so I dismissed it. But why did he lay all of the fondi's cards on the table?

As I ruminated over this issue I envied the crabs on the beach that Tony had reminded me of during our first dinner in Venice. I recalled that when we had discovered those crabs in the shallows on the beach near the SandCastle I had told Tony in no uncertain terms that I didn't envy those crabs, which knew nothing of the complexities of the world, because they would never know love either, and beauty, in their narrow world. Now, however, after having stuck my head out of the trenches into a world of flying bullets I wasn't quite so sure about that anymore until that hymn changed my thinking that spoke of a higher-level world than the of flying bullets that the crabs would never know about, the world of the grace of love. I suddenly realized that I had been correct with my last words to Palmerston that when hope dwindles for humanity love opens a new window, and that with love we will prevail, which appeared evermore like a force that we but tap into.

Next I remembered our chainsaw that we had left on the beach at the foot of our trail. What a wonderful world that thought represented! The biggest obstacle that we had faced that day was to no bigger than us cutting trough brush and finding the right kind of rocks to build stairways with for the steep parts of the tail. Then I wondered how many people in the world live like those crabs do, contend in total ignorance of the forces of the world that determine their destiny, which renders them impotent to shape the world with the forces of their love.

I asked myself if ignorance can ever be bliss, as some people say it is. I answered a resounding no

From: The Lodging for the Rose - Episode 3: Winning Without Victory