The Invasion has happened

I read the other day a post by Charlie Stross, and he was reflecting on some thoughts I have had for a long time, but he uses another way of looking at it, and it got me thinking further and, well you know how this goes.
The post is titled "Invaders from Mars" and in it Stross describes how we've effectively been invaded and governed by non-human, aggressive artificial intelligences that don't give a shit about us and only see us as "meat". These entities are called Multinational Corporations. 
Here's a piece:

Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.)
Corporations have a mean life expectancy of around 30 years, but are potentially immortal; they live only in the present, having little regard for past or (thanks to short term accounting regulations) the deep future: and they generally exhibit a sociopathic lack of empathy.

....
We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.
In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion.

Stross uses the term "whimsical" to describe his musings, but to me it's anything but.
I think it's deadly serious.
Besides the fact that these Entities, as they should be called from now on, govern our fates and are poised to continue to do so, think about this:
These entities are the ideal vehicle for anyone - or anything- determined to gain control of major facets of society, government and the future: Secret Societies, Sufis, Aliens, you name it..
Does Ultimate Power come accidentally through business practices, or is it a thought-out, planned and well executed project that has nothing to do with the obvious front? As usual, I have no answers. I can only ask the questions.
Multinational Corporations could be the re-incarnation of of old-school World Control Conspiracies, from the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians to the Order of Dagon and the Fire and Ice Coven.
Hell, they probably are..
Would we know it? And, if we did, would it make any difference?

Related articles

• Krugman, Stross and Martian hive-mind kleptocracy (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com)

Stargates among us, conspiracy and afterthought

I came across the site of Chad Stuemke, and quickly dismissed it as another fantasy-ridden moneymaker. Then I took a closer look and actually read the text..
Wait a minute.. This guy is not trying to sell the idea that our Cities are riddled with Portals to everywhere, and all you need to open them is to buy his book or DVD. Instead, he makes it perfectly clear that he is investigating Symbolism appearing in cities, and argues that it seems too complicated to be coincidence.

Now, that struck a chord and brought back memories, of a time when a certain person claimed that our city, Athens, Greece,  was full of Mystery Places, Portals, Loci as was the term (plural to Locus). There was evidence of that (if evidence can be had on a purely subjective basis), and some of that evidence was witnessed by me. A marking here, an unusual lighting there, a building that looked, well, weird. You get the picture. It is all very subtle, and, admittedly, not conclusive, but it added a certain degree of magic to an otherwise drab city, not to mention my way of thinking.

Two schools of thought can account for all that.
The first is that cities naturally grow around and encompass Places of Power, changing their appearance but not their essence. Not cities themselves, but the people building them. An architect who added a little detail to a certain corner of a building, not sure why but he liked the way it looked. A homeowner who arranges his garden around a block of stone that’s been there for who knows how long. A public works planner who likes the way a certain street lamp looks on a certain road, and deviates from the standard, as if marking the place for those who know what to see..

The second and slightly more disturbing is that THERE IS ACTUAL THOUGHT behind every norm-altering detail. That the Sacred Geometry of our cities is dictated by Those Who Rule The World In Secret, slowly nudging it towards the (right?) direction.
The Illuminati? The Sufis? The Masters of Shamballa?
I don’t know but it generates a warm feeling (dread?) to think that there is someone wise enough out there to plan all our fates, without us ever noticing. And if they left clues, can we see them?
Walter Rathenau comes to mind:

Walter Rathenau, writing in the Wiener Press (24 December, 1921) said, “Only 300 men, each of whom knows all others govern the fate of Europe. They select their successors from their own entourage. These men have the means in their hands of putting an end to the form of State which they find unreasonable.” Exactly six months after publication, Rathenau was assassinated.

I had read that Rathenau, at the day he was assassinated, claimed that those who rule the world are 72. Then I saw this image of the mural on Freedom’s Gate in the U.S. Capitol.

George Washington, the first President of the US surrounded by 72 stars… And then I am reminded of his uncanny resemblance to Adam Weisshaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati..

The bottom line of this article is: Watch your surroundings and don’t let your brain file everything away as normal. It could lead to eventual madness, I admit, but to some interesting discoveries as well. You could start noticing things very few people notice.

Have you ever been on a street at night, where the light looked like it had a bluish purple tint, although it came from totally ordinary street lamps?
And did you walk to the end of the road?

A useful guide to world Domination

Institute for the Future director Alex Soojung-Kim Pang wrote a damn funny piece on how to rule the world and the simple rules to accomplish it.

As a longstanding member of the Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow movement, I declare his proposals interesting and worth following, albeit a bit childish. I mean, I knew all that since the day I was born, and I’m never wrong, ok?
Now, pay attention and follow the following advice religiously. If you are successful I will contact you. Connection out.

The rules:

Be certain, not right
Claim to be an expert: it makes people’s brains hurt
No expertise, no problem
One simple idea may be one too many
Get prizes for being outrageous
There’s a success hiding in every failure
Don’t remember your failures. No one else will