• by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, March 26, 2018

How many people do you think run the world? If you say nobody rules the world, or there is no cabal that rules the world, I’m calling bullsh!t. Feel free to fold me up a nice little tinfoil, but I'm going to pound it down and out.

This is all top of mind this week because last November’s interview with former Facebook executive for user growth, Chamath Palihapitiya, started making the rounds again, as Fakebook and Zuck got cucked in the search for scapegoats who can still be tied to Russia, now that the Trump thing is kinda sorta halfway falling apart.

The focus has been on Palihapitaya’s comments about how Facebook is “programming” us and the “guilt” he feels about popularizing the platform, which he believes is “ripping apart” society. But there’s also an eyebrow-raising segment where he talks about who runs the world:

“There are about 150 people that run the world. Anyone who wants to go into politics -- they're all fucking puppets ... There are 150, and they're all men, that rule the world. Period. Full stop. They control most of the important assets. They control the money flows ... And these are not the tech entrepreneurs. They are going to get rolled over in the next five to 10 years, by the people that are underneath pulling the strings.”

His whole interview is a must watch, but that last segment is the $1,000 bill from his money quote: “The tech entrepreneurs are going to get rolled over in the next five to 10 years by the people that are underneath pulling the strings.”

The evidence of the day shows he may be behind the curve.

Look around. Will it even take five to 10 years? You can sense the accelerated timeline — these 150 dudes may think they don’t really have that much time. The internet is making a disgruntled populace both better and worse informed, more divided socially, yet united in dire political straits and ripe for some kind of pitchforks, torches and AR-17 kind of thing.

Sure looks like constricting free speech on the internet is a top goal to squelch that, STAT.

Let’s recall that one of the key subjects addressed at last year’s Bilderberg Conference — which customarily has 120-150 attendees — was "The War on Information." The media spin was that it addressed how to battle "fake news," but what if it didn’t? What if it was about the opposite? It’s not like any reporters were allowed into the conference.

The preferred term for this so-called elite crew of world shapers is "Superclass," as explained to us not-so-superclass types by somebody who would know: David Rothkopf, who wrote the book Superclass while he was managing director of Kissinger Associates. It is a political and strategic consultancy that only Superclass types — mostly white, male, trans-Atlantic — can afford.

Who are these Superclass folks running the world? As Palihapitiya says in his eminently quotable interview, they "don’t give a shit what you think about their fucking worldview."

For that information, the best resource into this fascinating shadow world of money, finance, power, murder, bribery and blackmail is the Netherlands-based Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics.

If there is a website anyone trying to get to the bottom of things needs as a clearinghouse of information, the ISGP is it. The ISGP focuses specifically on this Superclass, which it also calls — quoting Henry Kissinger, from his eulogy for The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham — "the permanent Establishment."

The ISGP figures out who is classified as Superclass via their wealth, social standing and membership in various government and non-government organizations, then ranks them by the number of interconnecting venn diagram circles. Henry Kissinger is No. 1.

Once you’ve gotten into the ISGP, you’re in the ballpark of the people really running the show. Not the "puppet" politicians, but people with so much money and multigenerational influence that they can keep us from knowing how much money and multigenerational influence they actually have.

Although sometimes they let the mask slip. What good is ruling the world if nobody knows? Or as David Rockefeller, one of those guys at the pinnacle of the Superclass pyramid, writes on page 405 of his 2003 autobiography Memoirs:

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have … attack[ed] the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

And that, dear readers, is the root core of everything that influences our daily lives in the United States.

For better or worse, the Superclass, the Permanent Establishment, the men behind the curtain, whatever you want to call them, are united in a globalist worldview.

Some people, myself included, believe the majority of evidence and experience to date displays a macro-strategy to raise the rest of the world at the expense of the citizens of the USA, which finds itself increasingly under financial and societal duress.

What are we going to do about it? I guess we’ll find out, in the next five to 10 years.