Albert Einstein got it right once again when he observed with some irony that the forces of intellectual inertia are stronger than those of physical inertia. This is particularly true in the case of the socio-historic collective imagination that has been encouraged through advanced techniques of information manipulation and social control. Test it yourself. Explain to someone that the four-star American General Wesley Clark, who was NATO´s Supreme Commander during Kosovo´s war, claimed that some high-ranking U.S. government officials, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, had already revealed to him that a plan for the destruction of seven states, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan along with the already invaded Afghanistan, would end up with an attack on Iran. I have already tested it. My interviewer reacted by saying: “That´s debatable”. It was my translator who had to interject: “Juan simply referred to what was said by the Chief Officer in front of the television cameras. What would be the debatable bit, that this information was revealed to the general, or that he disclosed it in public?” You could also explain to someone that on 21st July 2011 the Government Accountability Office – GAO, reported that in the course of two and a half years the Federal Reserve (the Central Bank of United States of America) had secretly injected more than 16 billion dollars into a group of powerful banks. I tried commenting on this fact to an expert in Economics. What was their reaction? He was unaware of these transactions, even though the sum of them exceeds the total budget of the USA for a period of four years. However, his lack of awareness about this was no obstacle to him promptly and energetically affirming “That cannot be true, it is too much money”.

Finally, you could also describe to someone the conclusions that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission – FCIC of United States of America, made public on Thursday 27th January 2011, after investigating the current financial crisis. In its final report, it is made clear that the crisis was not the result of unexpected and natural forces, nor of the inexorable processes of “the market”, but as a result of irresponsible, dishonest, and sometimes even illegal, acts carried out by bankers and financiers, in collaboration with the political establishment: the deregulation in 2002 of strict existing controls governing the supervision of high risk loans and mortgage policies; the ambition and greed of the bankers who made themselves rich with the exorbitant earnings obtained through high risk investment along with alleged infringement of Law; the opposition of said bankers to the much tighter supervision of their activities, claiming that government interference would suffocate “financial innovation”… The committee concluded that the basic structures of the financial system that led to the crash were not only still in place, but that the concentration of financial actions was now even significantly higher than it was prior to the crisis as a consequence of closing down of some institutions, and of merging others in order to form larger entities. I tested this idea out, this time with someone very close to me. Their reaction: “That sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me; the people who have an understanding of Economics and who comment in discussions on the TV, radio and newspapers every day tell us that we have lived beyond our means and that now we are suffering the consequences”.

By one of these strange coincidences, while I am writing these lines, images of the last days of the Nazi Regime and Japanese Empire are being shown on the National Geographic Channel. The images are from the last episode of a documentary called “Apocalypses: The Second World War”. I watch the bewilderment both of the German and of the Japanese people as their encounter with harsh reality precipitated the collapse of their absurd imaginaries, which had been forged through so much and such powerful propaganda. Their worlds, constructed around their Führer and their Emperor seemed to them to be the best possible worlds. They were so convinced of it, that even after the collapse of these systems they struggled to recognize that they were “the bad guys”. Similarly, four decades ago a very conscientious man, a Defence Department and RAND Corporation analyst named Daniel Ellsberg, came up against the same blind obstinacy when he delivered the conclusions of his investigation on the Vietnam war to the U.S. Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara: it is not the case that the United States is supporting “the bad guys”, we are “the bad guys”. Following this, he leaked 30.000 secret Pentagon’s documents, in doing so turning himself, according to his colleague and enemy, Henry Kissinger, into “the most dangerous man in the U.S.A”.

It is the same pattern that we have recently seen repeat itself with the Wikileaks revelations, which make clear both the Western Empire’s project of global dominance and its widespread manipulation of information. Julian Assange confirms that this Empire is a grotesque state of covert security, whose centre of gravity is located in the United States, but whose tentacles increasingly reach across the entire world. It is estimated that the United States has 817.000 people undertaking work that is top secret. This Anglo-Saxon Empire, that does not put a stop to international aggression, to massive crimes or the crashes of financial markets, and that is built on enormous global lies, will come to an end. The great financiers-“philanthropists” (“the markets”), the real and deep core of this Empire, who do as they please, will come to an end. The same thing has happened to all tyrants – large and small – throughout history. However, as long as the social masses are not able to clearly recognise who is leading us towards disaster and why, the suffering our peoples, especially those who are most vulnerable, will continue, perhaps for many years. Before trying to put out a fire, one should first identify where the combustion is actually taking place rather than being distracted by the smoke or the flames. My last book, La Hora de los grandes “filántropos”, is my modest contribution to this important battle.