Wednesday, September 14, 2005

World Trade or World Domination?

A couple admissions before this gets underway. First, I'm breaking my own rule of not writing any posts in a word-processor, but that's because as I went to open up the blog, my cable and internet died. It's really great.

Second, I haven't been hearing complaints yet, but I know they're building: I haven't posted much the last couple days because I've been writing things that don't really belong in a public space yet. They're more thoughtlings (thing saplings) than thoughts, so I'm going to let them grow a bit.

On to more important issues: Global Conquest.

I found it. The world headquarters of a major international commodity trading cartel. It's the world's second most heavily traded commodity. It's not traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or the NYSE.

Sure, it looks like a normal, everyday coffee shop. But it's not. It's hiding only blocks from the White House. It sits on it's corner, quietly planning world domination, and market manipulation.

I understand this is a fairly major allegation. But I have evidence. In two and a half hours sitting in that den of secrecy yesterday, I counted about 150-200 people come through the door. Some came in more than once. One man had to poor sense to come in three times. That's actually how I figured it out. It can't be just a simple coffee shop when there's a guy who comes in for 3 separate cups of coffee in 150 minutes. He was sneaking in for secret meetings with the Godfather of the syndicate.

Now, I'm someone who thinks about world trade more often than most. But it hasn't ever struck home in quite the same way as it did yesterday. Not when I saw a Nike Factory in Mongolia, or when I lived next to a Phillips semiconductor plant for two years in China. No, this was the kind of epiphany that can only happen in a true redoubt of capitalism: Starbuck's.

Next time you go into a Starbuck's, keep an open eye. You might just see the beginning of the International Coffee Traders Syndicate's world take-over.

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