Hi ATS...been on this board longer than half a year now, been looking into conspiracies and stuff for a long time, maybe the last 6 or 7 years.

When I first began to think about "the elite" or "the Illuminati" or whatever you want to call them...let's use the familiar ATS shorthand, "TPTB"....when the subject first began to form in my mind, I of course pictured the kind of "eye in the the pyramid" with all levels converging at the top...a very small number of people controlling everything, maybe generational/bloodline historical familes...maybe even a spiritual or mystical component, or something involved in such ancient power... in short, pretty typical hazy ATS-style idea of TPTB.

I no longer think this way. Which is interesting to me in and of itself, and also as a lesson in how our ideas change and evolve, as we grow and learn...

Anyway, the new model I think is more likely is that you have a variety of "power blocs." There is finance...that is a huge piece of the picture...then you have old money families, royals in Europe, old bluebloods in the US...skull and bones types...you see these names a lot, that's another power bloc. The political parties are power blocs. And there are more...some institutions in organized religion; criminal groups, "syndicates" and "cartels"; academia, always at the service of the highest bidders, of course...the various media court jesters, the publishers and news clowns and ad people...the medical industry, the military-industrial complex, big pharma, big agriubusiness, big oil...all these and more, each one a seperate power bloc.

A single person or company can straddle more than one of these categories...but truth be told, if you don't specialize its hard to achieve dominance in more than maybe two or possibly three at a time. Competition is fierce. Still, networks and systems of mutual support ("the old boy's networks" etc) arise to lead some through the jungle. But nothing is ever assured.

And beyond the EU/USA zone are other places, where different rules apply and power blocs operate in totally different ways...Russia, China, Japan, India, the OPEC nations...here too, cooperation is spotty and provisional, especially across oceans.

So you have all these power blocs, and they are all shifting around...like different plates of the earth's crust, say...always moving and sometimes coming into alignment, sometimes conflict. At the top, the numbers are smaller but the gaps are often even more unbrigdable.

This is the world I see now, a world no less scary and no more dangerous for lack of a single smoke-filled back room somewhere. In fact, the possibility that ultimately nobody is in control of this wild, careening-out-of-control party might be the scariest realization of all.

Impressive compilation. Sadly, the complexity of all you're attempting to sum up, is pretty complex.

Actually when I first taught about the idea of an elite, I just taught they had a lot of money and we're changing laws everywhere and making wars for their own profit and control.

Now, I also think a lot of the top elites are blood drinking satanists that have been possessed one time or an another by demons and/or reptiles.

Your idea of blocks isn't bad, but I just think this is how they want us to see it, when there are actually intertwined in so many ways that we could eventually deduct that less then 200 people control 80% of the world's money and markets.