The world isn't controlled by the Illuminati or the Zionists in a hundreds year-long conspiracy, in fact the world isn't really controlled by anyone: it's rudderless, directionless chaos. There are however, many powerful lobbies all competing for power, and it's inside of these groups that the real conspiracies are formed.

In my mind, the most powerful factions of the world today are:
>Large banks and corporations
>Saudi oil barons
>The military industrial complex of the Untied States
>The intelligence agencies of various countries, but namely the U.S., Russia and China
>The weak politicians that are complacent in serving the above groups

Despite that many countries may be democratic, the people who vote actually have very little say in what goes on in the world. Rather it's the collective interests of such groups that guide the events of history. This is what I call the deep state. It isn't a unified plan to rule the world, but rather a set of circumstances that allow a small minority of people to wield a massive amount of power.

I have a few examples to provide. The attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001 were funded by Saudi money, and most of them were Saudi nationals themselves. Yet we invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban who protected Bin Laden (who was himself backed by the CIA during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), only to ignore the Saudis. Then there was the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was totally unrelated to 9/11 but it was deceivingly almost implied to the American populace that this was a part of the War on Terror. The United States conveniently ignored Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11 to protect oil interests, and invaded Iraq for the same reason under the pretense of WMDs. Then you can look at all the shady things the CIA and NSA have done, such as Operation Mockingbird, MKULTRA, and all the coup's in Latin America for the CIA, and PRISM the NSA project leaked by Snowden.

Thoughts?