Gefira #50 Lords of the World

Gefira 50 directs the reader’s attention to the movers of the world. Presidents, prime ministers and chancellors (even those referred to as Empress of Europe) are not the real leaders of their countries. Rather, they are chief executive officers of particular enterprises that go by the name of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic or any other. Monarchs that used to rule over their countries my be gone, yet they have not been replaced by democratically elected officials. To be precise, they have, but only superfluously. Real power remains in the hands of the few very rich individuals who hold their term – like the monarchs of yesteryear – till their dying days.

Attentive individuals have long seen through the political systems and when they began voicing their opinion about them, they were mercilessly dismissed as followers or creators of conspiracy theories. These days, billions around the globe have seen it plainly: it is Mark Zuckerberg rather than Donald Trump, who has the final say. It is the former who could silence the latter in the twinkling of an eye, not the other way round. It is George Soros, a naturalized American citizen, who can publicly call the American president a danger to the world and get off Scot-free. He has not and will not face impeachment or anything of the same caliber; rather, it is the American president who is about to face his second impeachment.

Which is the reason why Gefira 50 delves into societies, institutions and organisations which operate behind the scenes. The few most important that were caught in our cross hairs certainly are merely the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy that envelops them and the fact that their activities are barely known to the public only implies that there must also be deep structures of whose operations we have no idea but whose existence we should – we must – reasonably infer or else we will never understand why politicians change their mind from one day to another, why certain individuals are suddenly in the spotlight of the media and become presidents or prime ministers while others disappear from public attention overnight.

The recent events in the United States along with the racial tensions that have been mounting there for decades bode ill for the country located between the oceans. The fault lines – political, social and economic – run deeper and deeper while the rapidly changing ethnic composition of the people collectively known as Americans only accelerates the process of inevitable disintegration. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are vivid even if dramatic recent illustrations of a dissolution of a state, while South Africa shows what future has in store for white Americans.