There are many theories that the individual governments on this earth are not really making the important decisions, the ones that effect global events. There are also other theories that state the the governments make decisions on everyday matters, but not those decisions that are really important. Then there are those theories that state that the important western governments and some of the other larger countries located around the world are under the thumb of some invisible world power, leaving only the relatively small countries on their own, but maybe not even them. I don't know what you think about all this, I don't even know what I think about it? This is the reason I decided to scour the internet and see what I could find on the subject. There is really quite a bit of material out there. Unfortunately there is a flip side to all this. There is no way to tell if the material is from crazies, people with political grudges, or if it is fantasy, or genuine information. Well that is the way of the internet I guess. Let's take a look at what people are saying about this.

One source claims that they have proof that the international corporations are running the world. Well we know that the international companies have become stronger. The old laws that used to prevent companies from forming monopolies worked well in their time, but companies went international, circumventing those American laws. In this country they dumped a tremendous amount of money into the laps of lobbyists and it regularly gets spread around congress. In other countries it is even more direct and just handed to the government representatives. Money buys power and as more money was spread around by the companies, the companies gained power. Our energy policy and the energy policy of the entire world is controlled behind the scenes by the giant oil companies, or so the theory goes. It is not controlled by the people, or their representatives, as it should be. The proof of that is that we have had all sorts of alternate energy sources available for many years now and they are hardly getting noticed. Oh the energy companies state that they are looking into things like wind power and such and have even spent a little of their humongous funds on trial projects, but they are just for show. Does anyone really think that a company like Exxon, which just declared a profit for 2007 of 40 BILLION dollars is going to really change their policies and go to wind power? Look at the military industrial complex. They are milking us for everything we've got. They are constantly being awarded contracts that are so huge that we as ordinary people can not even comprehend what those amounts of money would look like. They push inferior weapons and weapons that are always in cost overruns and they are doing it all over the world. Their lobby is also one of the most powerful in the US and you can bet that any representative of the government that has any part of their company located in it, will be pushing for more purchases with the excuse that it creates jobs. They are really setting our military policy and one has to only look at what the military contractors have gotten from us during the Iraq conflict to see what I am talking about. Our ever increasing military budget is keen proof that they are getting their way. There are other international corporations setting policy, but I don't have room to mention them all here. So what I am saying is that some think that the heads of corporations are deciding policy for most of the countries of the world. and that they are only out for what is best for their bottom lines and will do anything to increase business.

There is another group that believe that there are a few individuals that are so rich and so powerful that they direct what happens throughout the world from behind the scenes. This is a popular theory and sometimes different secret organizations are cited such as the SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY, THE ILLUMANITI, THE CARLYLE GROUP and others. Even the Masons have been mentioned in this context. The Skull and Bones was made famous by a recent movie. It used to be called the Brotherhood of Death. It is a secret society based at Yale University, that many of this country's most influential families belong to. George Bush stated, when asked about it, said that he couldn't talk about it because it was too secret. The Illuminati is supposedly a group of the most powerful people in the world. Some say that this is a fictional group, while others swear that not only is it real, but that it has been around for over 1,000 years. Still others state that this group was founded in the late 18th century. When ever it was supposedly founded is not really the point of this article. The point is that the people that belong to it are the ones that supposedly shape world policy. The Carlyle Group is what is know as a private investment group. Many of the World's former leaders are part of it. To state its worth, one has to only know that it bought part of General Motors. It controls almost 300,000 workers, because it controls their companies, but truthfully, I believe it is even more than this stated amount. It is relatively new, being only about 20 years old. Many believe that it is a front for a global dominance play. In other words, it's members seek to run the world.

Another theory states that the people that are running the show on this planet are completely unknown to the common person and that if we knew who they were and how rich and powerful they were, we would be astounded. It goes on to say that one call from one of these people could even start a war. Could a call like that have been made to President Bush? These people don't want to be known, they want to stay in the background, make tons of money and control almost everything that happens. they are sort of like stealth Emperors, emperors of the entire world and nobody knows of their existence except those in control of governments and possibly those executives controlling the huge multinational corporations. Can you imagine the existence of this kind of person? This would make the whole idea of a democratic country a farce. It is said that an investigative reporter looked into some more or less secret groups to see what part they played in making decisions that are clearly ones that should be make by individual governments. He claimed that he found several very powerful groups which he felt were running the world. They were The Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission (TC). He stated that the elites of the world belong to these groups and are pulling the strings behind every important world event. He went on further to state that the few elites that belong to the Bilderberg Group are so wealthy that their combined wealth exceeds that of all the citizens of the US combined. Wow, watch out Bill Gates.

One site I went to stated a very interesting theory that I have never heard before. It was just the opposite of what anyone would think. It went on to say that there is one country that controls the entire world and that country was England. It stated that the English elite actually control the actions of the United States and were using this country to carry out their policies, because obviously they no longer had the resources for empire building. Truthfully, I am not sure how anyone could come up with something like this. It is bizarre to say the least. The royal family was supposedly kept in power because they really were the power, but had adopted a low profile so that people wouldn't realize that they were behind world events. Even things like 9/11 were supposedly orchestrated to get us to take over the middle east, spend incredible amounts of money on contracting companies that they held large interests in and to further tighten laws in the US so that they could be used as an excuse to obtain certain data and get rid of people that were undesirable. This theory has been dismissed as offensive by some of those that lost people in the 9/11 disaster.

Throughout history there have been secret societies that powerful people belonged to. Some of them were tied in to pagan religious practices, while other's started out as trade organizations. Then there were the social organizations. Who is to say which ones were comprised of people so powerful that they couldn sway world policy? The difference between today and then is that we have a global economy and global companies. It is certainly much easier to make one's decisions felt through out the entire world if you run a global company, but does this give you more power behind the scenes of world government? There is no doubting that there are some people that are powerful enough to get something through congress for example, but are they powerful enough to call the president and tell him his next step and demand that he listen or else? Some say that there are and that the consequences of disobedience could be assassination, removal from office or even damage to one's party to assure that they don't succeed in the next election. I leave it up to you to decide what is true and what is not true, since I don't know the answer and that could be because I was never a member of the Skull and Bones.